Extension of My Usefulness
by Blue Moon3
Summary: During their train journey on the Victory Tour, Peeta finds he may be good for more than just helping Katniss sleep. Peeta/Katniss WIP runs concurrent with Catching Fire and Mockingjay
1. Extension of My Usefulness

**Disclaimer:** Characters and situations aren't mine, they are property of Suzanne Collins.

**Extension of My Usefulness**

I start awake when she twitches in her sleep. We had been huddled in the cave again, safe for the time being. Warm, naked and alone together, but without the pain of the true memories of that time. It takes me a moment to adjust to the dark and the gentle rocking movement of our train compartment. Katniss' train compartment.

I expect her to be crying out in her sleep again, but she's fairly still. A soft sigh escapes her lips, her foot twitching in sleep. I'd seen animals do that but hadn't realised, until sharing a sleeping bag with Katniss in the Games, that dreaming people twitch as well.

In her sleep she twists a little closer, the next puffing sigh of air skittering across my neck. Without my consent, my body gives an answering twitch, and I groan softly. This is becoming a worryingly frequent occurrence.

Katniss needs me to sleep. And in my own way, I need her for a restful night as well. This is my understanding of our arrangement. Her embraces are needy, not affectionate. She burrows into me for safety. I'm the nearest warm body. My mind understands this and, while it's not nice, I have come to accept it. Why, then, does my body insist on betraying me? I can almost see my brother's smirk. Testosterone. It doesn't matter that Katniss is my friend, she's beautiful and I ... want her. My body wants her. Hormones are not noble.

As though hearing my thoughts and cruelly teasing out the reaction of my body, her hand slips in her sleep. It shifts lower, small fingers tickling the bare skin between my T-shirt and underwear. My unwanted erection throbs steadily in response.

I will not sleep like this. I look into her face, so peaceful and unaware. If she woke and found out, my wretched life would probably not be worth living. There would be no more time spent in her compartment. She would cease to sleep this easily. With slow, smooth movements, my hand moves to the front of my shorts. That first touch, gentle pressure against the hard, jutting flesh, is a relief and a jolt all at once. I clamp my jaw shut, knowing I must breathe steadily if I'm to make sure she stays asleep. My fingers reach in through the slit in the cotton, gently tugging my erection free before beginning a slow rhythm.

As the pace builds and I struggle harder to keep my breathing even, a treacherous voice whispers through my mind: This is better with her so close.

Images of her flicker through my mind. Memories of kissing her. The dreams I have of doing more. A groan catches at the back of my throat, but I think I manage to swallow it back down as my body begins to tense.

Another twitch from the slumbering body beside me. Her hand is on my wrist now. I still, like an animal sensing prey. Slowly, so slowly, I ease my head to the side, and see that her eyes are still closed, mouth still relaxed as she sighs in her sleep. Her face burrows into my chest, and her hand ... her hand slips down my wrist, looking to join with mine. I have less than seconds to panic, before her hand is covering mine, her thumb resting gently on the head of my cock. Her eyes remain closed. Her breathing is still soft. The tension in my body, the arousal flowing through me, is almost unbearable. I have no time to call myself a sick bastard for liking this so much, this unconscious intimate innocent contact with my body.

Too afraid of waking her, I keep our hands still, but push slowly up into their warm, tight grasp. Her thumb rubs over the slit of my cock, and bright colours burst behind my eyelids. It will not take much. Another thrust, two, and a third, and I'm gritting my teeth to stay silent once more as thick semen splatters over my stomach.

I release a long breath I hadn't realised I was holding, trying to wipe my hand without disturbing her. The warm rush of endorphins slip through my blood, making me warm and sleepy once more. I turn and smile down at the sleeping Katniss.

But the sleeping Katniss is no longer sleeping. Sleeping Katniss has one eye open. She's looking at me, her head still heavy on my chest. I take a deep intake of breath to explain myself, though there is no decent explanation I can give.

Her hand moves against mine, her palm to my palm, her fingers wrapping around my hand, and she squeezes. I feel the cooling slide of semen coating her thumb and try to remember that this is despicably embarrassing, not arousing. I watch her face carefully. She is not throwing me from her bed. She is not demanding an explanation. She doesn't even seem to be fully awake, though I sense she must understand what I've done.

Slowly, she pulls my hand to her. I think, for a moment, that she wants me to hold her until she goes back to sleep. Perhaps she's willing to pretend nothing happened, for the sake of keeping her night guard. But her hand pulls mine lower. It's not until she presses my palm firmly to the cotton front of her panties that I even begin to understand. Her hand retreats, stroking over my wrist, and I am left touching her, the heat of her body scalding through the thin cotton, the heel of my hand pressed snugly against her pubic bone, my fingers curled under and between her legs, moulded to the shape of her body. She still watches me. Her eyes are sleepy, but she is certainly awake. I know because her face is serious in a way it only is when awake. She frowns slightly. She shifts her hips. Her hand pulls gently at my wrist. I know what she wants, but I'm not entirely sure how to give it to her.

Thinking of my own preferences, I slide my hand upwards. Her frown deepens for a moment, and there's a flicker of a strange, new expression – uncertainty, perhaps even rejection – before my fingertips slide inside her underwear and my hand reassumes its position. Her hair is soft and sleek, straight unlike my curl. I had thought perhaps her stylists' obsession with waxing every inch of her might have left her completely hairless, but here they have let her remain natural. My thumb strokes idly over the soft fuzz, and Katniss sighs as though sleeping once more. Only the slow undulation of her hips tells me that she is utterly awake and aware of what I'm doing.

But from here, I am flying blind. She sighs again, shifting her body, but it is not like mine. I don't know what to stroke. I don't understand where to rub.

Once more, her hand covers mine, her fingers laid over my fingers. She looks up at me. All I can see in the dim light is the whites and pupils of her eyes, trained carefully on me. She presses my middle finger, urging it upwards. The heat and softness yields into a slit, and hot, slick juice coats my finger. She hums softly, and I begin to understand. Slowly, I shift this finger through the slippery folds she has helped me discover. I run my finger back and fore, unable to see what I touch but mentally mapping the landscape of this most intimate part of her. As I draw my finger back towards my palm, it bumps over a hard little nub of skin. Katniss jumps in reaction, her body stiffening. I worry I have hurt her, but she's clutching my wrist suddenly, trying to guide my touch back to that spot. I do my best to comply, circling the round little nub, rubbing it, slicking my finger down first one side then the other. Her body is taut as one of her bows, just before she releases the string.

Her fingers grip my wrist now – no longer guiding my hand, but hanging on. I am pleased for a sign of her desperation. It indicates feelings I know myself. I look at her frowning face. Her eyes are shut again, but she's not sleeping. Her body's twitching, but not from dreams. I know that colours are bursting behind her eyes. I know that she is close to that point.

Though my wrist is aching from her grip, and from the small, fast, constricted movement of my fingers, I try my best to do to her what I would want right now. I rub faster, I press more firmly. Each time I seem to hit the 'right' spot, I do my best to replicate the action.

Then all at once, her back is arched and her eyes are wide. I'm still rubbing, but she's pulling on my wrist now. Slow down, I think. I slow, stroking circles more gently, and wonder if I'm imagining the slight twitch of the slippery skin beneath my fingers.

After I have pulled my hand free, wiping my fingers on my shorts, she looks at me a moment. Her frown is deeper. I wait for her to tell me this was a mistake, with a block of ice lodged in the pit of my stomach. I wait for her to ruin this.

Slowly, she slides her arm back across my chest. She's still watching me. One of her legs slides between mine. It's close, the way we slept when cold in the cave. Slowly, as though not trusting what I'll do when she's not watching, she closes her eyes. And they stay closed.

I wrap my arms tightly around her and pull her close. It is not a move forward, I know that. It is an extension of my usefulness to her. But I am still here, still wrapped around her sleeping body. And that's enough.


	2. The Tiny Victory

**The Tiny Victory**

Under her silent guidance, I learn the feel of Katniss' body during the next few nights. Her hands guide mine at first, and together we map her breasts, her back, her ass. She slides them under the shirt she's wearing, pushes them down from their natural resting place at the small of her back.

At first I worry about touching her, about doing something she doesn't want. I like to think of myself as honourable, but I am not made of stone. I have loved her for years. I'm starting to understand that I have wanted her as well. Every moment we spend together in the day makes it clear that _I_ am not what she wants. She is civil, but her civility is only luke warm. She has more important things on her mind. Even if she didn't, I doubt she would replace her worried thoughts with ones of me.

I check her face as my palms, roughened by years of burns, smooth over her warm skin. Her dark eyes watch me in the grey half-light of the compartment, the whites of her eyes made bright by the moonlight. This silent vigilance after her hands have withdrawn is her permission. They burn bright with lust, even if it's not directed at me.

It does not take much encouragement, that first time my fingertips brush the under-swell of her breast, to continue upwards. Katniss only guides my hands, she does not direct my movement. Once I am where she wants me, I am on my own. I cup her breast, a handful of softness with the hard peak of her nipple grazing my palm. I touch her gently. She likes that. She likes it when I feather fingertips over her hard nipples, when they tickle down the side of her breast. Then I move on to massaging her breast, playing with her nipple. I roll it under my thumb, feeling it spring back to its firm point, then pinch it gently between my fingers. This she likes that as well. Her eyelashes lower, her breathing is shorter. And despite the lack of attention I'm receiving, my body's reaction mirrors hers as arousal courses through me.

Every night she wants my touch, I know when it is time. When she is close as she can get, her hips pressed flush against me, I know to slide my hand down. She does not need to guide me there. I have become an expert at teasing out the hard little nub that brings her so much pleasure. I know now how to touch her, how to read her moods.

Sometimes I want to use this knowledge to draw it out longer, but I do not think she'd approve. She is fierce in these moods, her eyes sparking like flint, and I know I am dealing with the wild Katniss that, like a feral cat, does not want to be teased. But it is drawing out her pleasure that I think about when it's my turn – for the brief time when I can still think about anything, before the pleasure of her touch and _knowing_ that it is her touch, overcome any coherent thought. It is manipulating her body like paint on a canvas, mixing and swirling the colours of sensation, until she is overcome.

When Katniss comes, she is beautiful and tragic. She frowns. I love this about her.

When Katniss makes me come, she watches me intently right to the end. I know because I once made an effort to keep watching her back. As the pleasure crested inside of me, I thought she might kiss me. But we never kiss. There are too many memories of false kisses. The action has been taken from us by the Capitol, and neither of us wants to think about the Games in these silent, dream-like moments. They are ours, they are our escape.

But one time, when she has her little hand wrapped tight around my erection, and is stroking me slowly the way I like, I remember one kiss – the kiss in the cave, when her head was bleeding and I had nearly recovered. I remember the one time her tongue flickered out to test my lips, and the heat of her mouth. I remember my tongue chasing that soft flick, the sudden stab of concern that I had missed something wonderful that would never happen again. But our tongues did touch, a slow tentative stroke, one against the other. This is what I remember when Katniss speeds up and the colours star to burst behind my eyelids, and I cannot think of anything else.

The silent exchange of scalding touches becomes our nightly ritual. We never sleep through the night. One of us always wakes. If it is Katniss, I awake to the feel of her fingers grazing over naked skin. My hips or my thighs, just once the half-hard shaft of my cock. If it is me, I am almost always awoken by her tossing or calling out in the throes of a nightmare, and soothe her awake. I hold her close against me until her frantic breathing calms. These are the times when she moves my hands lower, or higher, or under.

I have once slid my fingers inside of her. The heat was almost too much to bear, and I could feel the twitching squeeze of her muscles as she began to orgasm. When it was my turn, I tried to imagine I was sliding inside of her as she stroked me. But I couldn't quite picture it.

The best night is after we have visited Four. Part of the day was spent on the beach. We both felt wet sand between our toes for the first time, and balmy heat and salted air. We held hands as foamy waves lapped at our toes. I could almost believe she took my hand for us, and not for the cameras.

The night that follows is bright, and I can see Katniss more clearly than normal. We both wake, but neither of us has had nightmares. When I look down at her, I can see every fine detail: the fringe of her eyelashes, and the flecks in her eyes, the creases at the corners of her mouth where she used to smile properly, before the Capitol made sure that all her smiles were false.

She does not need to direct me to touch her. I seduce her body, draw out her arousal in the ways she has taught me work best. By the time my fingers slide between her legs, she has turned her face into my neck, breathing raggedly against my skin. I do not urge her to orgasm, as I normally do. I tease over the little nub, touching it too softly. When she spreads her legs, one crossing over mine, my hard cock throbs in response. I use my fingers to spread her fleshy slit, still slowly and gently circling the glossy pearl. I am wondering – hoping – that if I tease her long enough she will speak. I want her to ask me for more, to prove that she wants me and what I do to her. It's a selfish notion, and she is too clever to fall for it.

Her little hand slides over the head of my cock. Her feather-light touch runs lower, fingers gently lifting and cupping my balls. My eyes flutter shut. We have never touched each other together before, and the sensation is in intense. As she wraps her hand around my cock and begins to stroke steadily, I can't hold my resolve and flick her little nub firmly and quickly.

But I am rewarded for my efforts. As her body tenses and her hand stutters on my prick, she arches her back and pushes her hips up into me, about to come. And as her body jerks, hand tightening almost painfully around me, she releases one soft mew of pleasure against my neck.

This is all I need, and with an answering groan of my own I feel the pleasure inside me snap, and hot semen splashes over my belly.

The tiny victory, the sound of her pleasure wrung out from her iron self-control, is a precious gem I keep with me always. I turn it over in my mind in idle moments. I catch glimmers of it when she meets my eye on the stage in the Districts, or across dinner, or when Effie is giving a lecture. It is what makes touching her and not having her almost bearable.


	3. She Has the Last Word

**She Has the Last Word**

Katniss and I share our final interview at the Capitol. Caesar Flickerman is jubilant as I drop to one knee and propose. Katniss does a very good job of appearing overcome with joy. So much so that when we embrace, sharing one of those kisses that is owned by the Capitol and performed for the cameras, I can almost pretend that her happiness is real. I am split in two on the inside. The media farce and political tensions following The Hunger Games have delivered me what I have wanted most ever since I was a boy. But it's not right. It's not the same, knowing it is all pretend. In many ways it's worse than not having it at all.

As Katniss takes my hand and kisses my cheek, I try not to think about this. She has been talking to President Snow, and they're both smiling. Maybe everything will be alright after all.

As we exit the stage, Katniss is exuberant. We are still hugging and laughing long after the train has left the station and we have waved the cameras Good-Bye. We ate a painfully enormous meal in the ball following the interview, taking bites from every plate for as long as we could stand it, then danced together to avoid the Captiol people as much as possible. When we bundle back onto the train, I regret that by the same time tomorrow I will be back in my lonely bed in District Twelve, ready for an early start at the bakery.

Once on the train, we all make straight for our beds. The red rims to Haymitch's eyes suggest he badly needs to spend the rest of the night in the loving embrace of a white liquor bottle – the effort of smiling and being charming for the Capitol seems to have taken more of a toll on him than us. The cracks in whatever cosmetics hold Effie's face together for the cameras tell that she will be spending the next three hours plying herself with goo. Katniss and I hold hands as we wander to her compartment. We have long since given up the pretence of sleeping separately, despite Effie's primness on the subject. If she leaks stories of our shacking up throughout the Tour to the media, so much the better.

After all, we are an engaged couple now. The Capitol would be thoroughly disappointed if we chastely kissed goodnight at her door and went our separate ways.

We are still smiling and sharing jokes about the trip when we curl around each other under Katniss' blankets. Her hair is still in the elaborate braid that she wore at the reaping, and her stylists have been raving over ever since. As she settles her head on my arm, I reach behind her and loose some pins. The braid falls, and I comb out the silky strands of her hair between my fingers. With a smile, I note her hair is slightly kinked from the styling. I smooth until her hair is quite loose, tendrils falling across her forehead and cheeks.

"Are you glad we're going home? Or sorry?" I ask her very softly, as I watch my fingers play through her hair.

When she doesn't answer, I see that she has fallen asleep.

We are in the cave again. I am lying on the ground, caked in mud, knowing I am dying. But there isn't any pain. I lie utterly still. Katniss is leaning over me. She's bleeding as well. It pours from the wound on her head, and I know that there will be no victor from District 12 this year. All we have is the last few moments together, and the hope that this numbness will last till our end.

No, I am not numb. Though she is bleeding, Katniss is slowly wiping the mud from my body. Her hands are warm and assured. They slip through the mud, sluicing it from my skin. A tingling sensation follows every touch, carrying on the path of her hands, until my body feels like it crackles with static. She finishes with my thighs. And pauses over my shorts. Katniss is so pure, I think fondly smile through the hum and fug and encroaching death. She has cleaned every inch of me leaving my skin aglow, but cannot bring herself to touch my shorts.

It is this thought that triggers the realisation that I'm dreaming.

My eyes open as the dream shatters, as dreams so often do when their true identity is discovered. It's the nightmares that stick around, whether you know they're real or not. Perhaps it's because they have the power to follow so strongly into the real world – or perhaps because reality feeds them so directly.

The train compartment is still dark, and I am cold. I frown. We must have kicked off the covers. And then I realise that the warm weight of Katniss' head on my chest is missing. Not missing, but moved. Looking down, I see her nearly at the foot of the bed. Her legs are curled into the space where the lower half of my leg should be, her toes just touching my shin. One of her arms is thrown across my thighs, and her head pillowed on my stomach.

I reach out and run my hand over her hair, splayed out over my chest. She raises up on her elbow and looks over her should at me. Katniss isn't gloriously happy as she was earlier. There's something strange in her eyes. A blankness I have never seen before, replacing the joy of earlier, the desperation they held in District 11, the sadness that they have shown since we left for the Hunger Games. They seem strangely empty. I make a move to touch her face, draw breath to ask if she's alright, but at that moment her fingertips graze over the shaft of my cock. Although the sensation brings me pleasure, a stab of irritation is my first impulse. That she won't allow me to ask her what's wrong; that she can use my own desire against me. As her head sinks back onto my stomach, it's clear that whatever she's feeling is not a topic for discussion. That tonight - again - there will be silence.

Something inside me urges me to break this silence. Her fingers trace circles over and over my thickening shaft. Again I draw a breath. Words never leave my mouth. I feel a warm, wet tickling that jolts through me. This new and unique sensation, I know, can only be the first tentative lick of her tongue. And with this new assault, my determination dissolves into nothing and my head collapses back onto the pillow.

My fingers weave through her hair again, but I am careful to neither pull nor push. I simply hold onto this extension of her as she explores me with her tongue.

The licks are hesitant at first. Staring at the dark carriage ceiling, I can imagine her fascinated, fixated expression as her hunter's instincts catalogue every reaction of my body. The twitching of my cock following each soft probe of her tongue; the slight jut of my hips when she licks beneath the head, a favourite spot of hers when she strokes me; the hissed intake of breath that I cannot help when her hot tongue wriggles against the slit.

When her hot mouth engulfs me, I cannot help my hand tightening in her hair. I release her again immediately, but am left entirely taut. She suckles on me, just the crown of my prick, and I can feel her tongue smoothing over and around me. She has forced every other thought from my head. I am just sensation, just _this_ sensation, the rest of my body held suspended, fixated upon the slow movement of her mouth on my hard flesh.

Before I can properly register it happening, my hand is grabbing frantically at her shoulder. I pull her up scant moments before my cock jerks and a thick jet of semen shoots onto my stomach.

I lie panting, watching Katniss as she innocently draws the back of her hand across her mouth. The word 'pure' springs to mind again, but it's too perverse for the moment and I quickly shake it from my head. Her eyes are still strange, but her lips are smiling ever so slightly. I sit up and reach for her, taking her wrist and drawing her towards me. My hand reaches between her parted thighs, but she pushes me away, shaking her head slowly.

We sink down onto the bed together. She somehow arranges herself around the pool of cooling semen on my belly. As I ineffectually dab at it with a balled up sock, she surprises me by speaking. "We can't keep doing this, can we?"

I throw the sticky sock across the room, and settle her into a more comfortable position while I try not to point out that we're engaged and this behaviour should be positively encouraged. I brush my lips over her hair again. My warm afterglow is steadily being replaced by the sense that I was right: talking is going to spoil everything. "What do you mean?" I ask quietly, hoping that if I fain ignorance she can take it back, and at least something of these nights can remain as a rare happy memory when we're home.

"You know what I mean," she sighs.

"I've never asked you for anything, Katniss," I remind her. My arm automatically tightens around her shoulder, as though I can sense her mentally withdrawing from me.

"No, I know." Katniss bestows one of the rarest of gifts on me. She turns her head in towards my chest and takes a deep breath through her nose. As she releases it, her lips press against my naked skin and she kisses me. A real kiss, not a kiss for any cameras. "But we can't keep doing this."

As always, she has the last word. She sleeps deeply, her breath fluffing over my skin. I lie awake, hoping the morning will never come.


	4. Hollow

**Disclaimer:** As per the norm, characters and situations are the property of Suzanne Collins. The film Peeta watches is also loosely based around Charlie Brooker's Wraithbabes films in Black Mirror.

**Hollow**

The news of the Quarter Quell doesn't really surprise me. No, that's too blasé. What I mean is I knew that it had been too easy. There had to be something. The Capitol couldn't have left us – and the rest of Panem – to our own devices. I think, even from inside our house, I hear Katniss' reaction.

_Katniss._

My family is pale and silent. It might not be me. There's a fifty-fifty chance, and I doubt any of them would really miss Haymitch. But it will be me, of course. I'll be seeing to that.

Dad makes a move to come towards me, but I can't stand the thought of physical closeness or the pity it implies. I am up on my feet faster than I imagined possible on my prosthetic, and out the door. I'm off to see Haymitch.

It goes as you might expect. Haymitch is drunk and deflated in front of his television. Our conversation is brief. I don't know whether he'll keep to our agreement. Either way, I will keep her alive. It's all I can think of to do.

When I go to sleep that night, the same memory plays over and over in my head. It is one I have not yet painted – I don't know if I could. The three seconds after it was announced there could be only one winner of the seventy-forth Hunger Games after all. The moment when she turned on me, her arrow drawn, her eyes wide with fear. She thought my knife was raised towards her, that I was ready to end it. I can't say if she would have done it. But my nightmare is this moment, again and again. She turns, she draws back the string, she aims for my head.

Haymitch's name is called at the reaping, so everything is made simple. I am volunteering my way into the arena, whether it is what the other two had agreed or not. I love Katniss, and trust Haymitch to an extent, but I am not so stupid as to believe they had not made their own agreement. Who knows which of them Haymitch would have actually kept.

Katniss and I are bundled to a train without ceremony. It barely registers that I have not said been given the opportunity to see my family. But really, after the last goodbye, what more would there be to say? Maybe this way is better. Maybe I should tell them that, to keep in mind for next year.

She is pale but determined. She is beautiful. We are watching the broadcast of all the reapings. We draw little stars next to the names of those victors we are to face in my notebook, though I am not really paying attention. I am watching her and trying to memorise everything about her. Our days together are now numbered now, our time is finite.

As I make my way to my compartment, Haymitch lays a hand on my shoulder. He passes me a small chip, like the ones they have in the Capitol for music. "Don't say I never give you anything," he growls.

I frown, turning the little chip over in my hand. "What is it?"

"You might have had Effie fooled with that sleeping together malarkey – but there's no point pretending now. Just keep that to yourself." He turns and slouches back down the corridor, only turning his head to gruffly call, "And if you're caught, you didn't get it from me!"

I shrug, and bend to put the small plastic chip in my shoe. It's the only thing that I'm confident won't be taken away to be laundered when I'm not looking.

Haymitch's words keep me from going to Katniss' room that night. There's no point pretending. He can't have known how accurate those words could be. I have been pretending that our nights together could grow into more, or could hold meaning for both of us. Katniss has been pretending that it doesn't matter, that she's not hurting me. There's no point pretending any more. And I make a decision that anything I take from her, from now until the Quarter Quell and whatever happens inside, I want it to be genuine.

The Capitol seems to have lost its shine. Or maybe its people aren't as thrilled with the latest twist on the Quarter Quell as President Snow feels they should be. The welcomes are dull. My style team are miserable. Even Portia is serious as she quietly makes appraisals on my weight, the style of my hair, the smell of the bakery that seems to follow me wherever I go.

When I am buffed and moisturised and primped into my Capitol self, the one the cameras adore, I am left to go about my own devices. That data chip has been weighing on my mind. We have perfectly legitimate footage of all the previous Hunger Games, all the ones that mattered. It's possible Haymitch might have swiped some additional information from somewhere that must be kept secret. But then the references to mine and Katniss' non-relationship would be irrelevant.

In my room, I can see that the chip is for the little slot at the side of the television. The Capitol TVs have multiple media functions, unlike our sets back home which will only play the clunky old tapes. I slide the chip into the slot on the side of the set, and wait for the screen to light up.

Soft music plays. It's fairly non-descript, the kind of thing they play in the elevators. Bright studio lighting comes up on a white room with white furniture – a white sofa and white coffee table. On the sofa sits a beautiful girl with black hair. She is scantily clad in lace, her features harshly painted. Black rimming her eyes and eyebrows, candy pinks coating the apples of her cheeks, and a deep scarlet coating her lips, painting them fuller than their natural outline. I think of Katniss made up for the interviews last year. The way they made her look like herself, but moreso.

As the camera pans in, there is something not right about this woman. The lens they're using gives the shots an ethereal quality. Everything looks hazy, glassy, like watching through a mild dose of trackerjacker venom. But at the point where the woman's face can be made out completely clearly, it's obvious she's not all there. She looks drugged, or like she's been trying to keep up with Haymitch in a drinking contest.

A man walks up to her. From her seated position and the tight angle on her face, all that's visible of the man is an obscene bugle in jeans that are too tight. The man, whose face I doubt the viewer will ever see, slips a finger into the girl's mouth. And it is with this thought that I realise she _is_ a girl, possibly younger than Katniss. Another finger slides into her mouth. She is frowning, and her mouth is strangely slack as the man's digits smear her lipstick and I hear him laugh off-camera. I assume it's him, and not the people filming.

When his other hand starts unfastening buttons on his pants I turn off the set. Haymitch clearly has a very skewed idea of what I would think of as a Katniss substitute.

Kicking off my shoes, I pad into the bathroom and fiddle with the controls on the shower for a while. I've managed to work out how to get the temperature right, how to stop it spraying me with rose scented foam. A basic shower is all I want. Something to scrub away the hideous images on that data chip, the aftertaste of exploitation it's left with me.

While I leave the shower to steam up the bathroom, I wander back into the bedroom, unbuttoning my shirt as I go. I eject the chip from the TV, and take it back to the bathroom, dropping it into the toilet. I don't know if it cost Haymitch anything to get it, or if it holds any personal significance for him. I don't really care.

My shirt and pants drop to the floor. They're left in a heap which, at home, would cost a yelling fit from Mum. Last year I would have left them there, not bothered about the comings and goings of my clothes, where they disappear to, who launders them. But now Darius stands in the dining hall. Darius will probably be coming to take my clothes away when I'm not here. I pick my things up and fold them, leaving them on the towel shelf. It's not about making things easier for him – because, really, once the Capitol have cut out your tongue and done who-knows-what else to you, how can a boy with a death sentence make things easier? But I don't like the idea of being an extra burden.

The shower has misted up the mirror, so I don't worry about seeing my prosthetic, or how ungainly I look getting into the shower being careful not to slip. My head is still confused about my missing half-limb. I feel the hot water that's pooled in the shower base beneath my right foot. Beneath my left foot, nothing. Because it's not there. These thoughts can circle in my head for much too long if I let them, so I'm careful not to dwell on the strangeness of it.

I close my eyes and enjoy the hot jets of water. It's slightly scented despite my best efforts, but it will do. Playing with the controls when actually inside the shower can be fatal.

Sluicing the water over my body, my eyes remain shut as water pours over my face. I'm left focusing on the feel of my hands, hot and wet. Unbidden, the image of that dream of the last night of the Victory Tour floats into my head: Katniss' warm hands sliding through the mud caking my skin. Katniss' warm tongue sliding over my hard prick.

Except that wasn't a dream. It may not have been the most loving gesture she has ever made towards me, but it was real.

My cock starts to thicken at the memory. Hot wet mouth. Hot wet water. Katniss' head lowering over me, her hair tickling my thighs, her tongue still sliding from side to side as the heat of her mouth sucks me in.

I open my eyes and sigh. Look down at myself. "Haymitch needn't have bothered," I mutter crossly, though my words can't be heard over the rush of the water. The feel of my erection in my hand is familiar, of course. Many nights were spent hushed under the covers, thankful that I shared a room and not a bed with my brothers. Hot sticky nights with nothing to fuel my fantasies but thinking of Katniss and trying to imagine knowing her. Touching her.

Memories have replaced my imagination. My hand slips easily over my prick. The movements are perfunctory, designed for speed and efficiency rather than pleasure. If it were Katniss, if she were in the moods that couldn't be told apart except by the way she touched me, she might go slowly. One night she seemed intent on exploring the ridges, the veins, the reactions she could draw from me. Another time she stroked me to wake me up, then ignored me while I pleasured her, only allowing my release when she had come herself.

So many memories that should be fond, but are tainted with the bitterness of knowing they meant nothing to her. She would not be in a matching shower, thinking fondly of me.

I grit my teeth as my hand speeds up, and I latch on to a vision of her first tentative licks over the head of my cock. They are enough to tip me over the edge. But my orgasm is hollow. My breathing is hard, but I feel nothing as I watching the swirling mess of my semen disappear down the drain.

I rinse off my hand and try not to look as my erection withers, returning to its normal flaccid state.

Stepping out of the shower, I wrap my body in a towel, and try to dispel the memories of her from my mind. If I am to keep her alive, I mustn't think of what she does to me. What she _has_ done to me. And keeping her alive is now all that matters.


	5. A Good Last Day

**A Good Last Day**

_I just want to spend every moment of the rest of my life with you._

Never mind that my life will be painfully short. Never mind that it will undoubtedly end in bloodshed and murder. Katniss has taken my words to heart, has barely left my sight since I said it. Is it too much to hope that she is thinking the same thing? Or is this her way of granting of my last pitiful wish?

I banish the last thought from my mind. There is something strong about Katniss that makes me doubt she knows how to pity.

That first night together we sleep, as I suspect we have not slept since the Victory Tour. Peaceful, unbroken sleep. For just one night, there were no nightmares. Nor did I jolt awake with the unshakable feeling that something horrible is about to happen. We wrapped around each other, limbs entwining, breath mingling. Feebly, I try to keep my eyes open to watch her – _I just want to spend every moment of the rest of my life with you_ – but we are so warm and safe-feeling that sleep is a relief.

So when Katniss falls asleep with her head in my lap for an hour or two on the roof, I am sure to take my chance while I can. I have been sketching her throughout our picnic. Quick lines capturing fleeting moments, or details I want to pick out. The way she tilts her head, the strange half-smile when something funny has entered her head but she doesn't want to tell me. I try to draw everything that I love about her and, of course, fail miserably.

As her breath evens out and her head grows heavy in my lap, I put down my pencil and pad. Strands of dark hair have escaped her braid and curve across her forehead. Her eyebrows have been unnaturally shaped by her stylists. I try to recall the way they should be: a little fuller, a little longer. Not a huge difference, and it makes no odds to me, but I like spotting the changes the Capitol makes. I like knowing I remember her the way she is at home.

Her nose is long and straight. Her skin is the sun-kissed olive of a District Twelve girl with the luxury of spending her days in the sun, and there are a sprinkling of light freckles across her nose. Her lips are thin. Only I know how soft they are – at least I think only I know. And her chin is slightly pointed. I try to think of girls my brothers call pretty. Katniss is like none of them. She is their superior in every respect. From the strength in her jaw, to the fragility in the tiny creases of her eyes. There is no one who can compare to her.

The scar from the Games still stands out, pale and brutal above her right eyebrow. The body buff made it disappear for a few months, and the most recent round of cosmetics has made it almost invisible. But I see it. Half an inch long, a thin white line of scar tissue. How many scars, I wonder, litter her body. I know about mine, I've counted them each time I dry off after a bath. But we were always in the dark on the train. I never had the chance to catalogue her body, to count her imperfections and note the ways in which they made her more perfect.

My hand travels down her face, thumb brushing over her lips. They part ever so slightly at my touch, almost inviting. Our faces are close, and I realise I have been leaning in to her as I study her face. It only takes another inch before my lips are gently brushing hers.

She doesn't stir and a part of me is disappointed.

As I straighten, my body makes it clear just how much I had hoped she would wake up. I sigh, unable to adjust myself with her head on my lap. It occurs to me that this is how the whole mess started out. But I don't think I'll end up so satisfied here, on the roof, as we prepare to go to our deaths.

My death, I correct myself. Katniss will win. She has to.

Katniss mumbles, her eyelids fluttering as she begins to take in the world around her once more and separate it from the dreamland she has just left. I can feel my face flushing. My mind is torn between hoping she doesn't notice the hardness in my lap, and hoping she does. My body responds to her closeness and movement, my erection throbbing its demands for contact in a way that is difficult to ignore.

Her dark eyes glance up at me. "I didn't think you'd want to miss it," I say quickly, hoping I sound convincing. I nod my head at the sky before us, which has turned the most astounding shade of burnt orange.

"Thanks," she says, smiling that same strange half smile. As she sits up I quickly adjust myself, forcing my mind back to enjoying these moments, as I had promised her and myself I would.

The interviews are a tiny marvel all of their own. I don't know when the idea came to me, there were so many small moments that rolled into one huge movement. It might have been when I realised the tide of popular opinion was turning in our favour. Or possibly when Seeder ruminates on President Snow's power, whether he couldn't overthrow the old rules and abolish this strange new turn for the Quell. Perhaps even when Katniss' beautiful dress – and I am not so calculating that I haven't noticed she looks beautiful in it – bursts into flames, and leaves her a mockingjay in the embers. However the idea came to fruition, the results are precisely what I hoped and expected. As we, the victors being sent to die, stand hand in hand before the people who are being told they want this, we watch all hell break loose.

We scramble from the stage. The victor-tributes scatter to their waiting cars, all carefully planned schedules thrown out the window. Katniss and I stay together. She is gripping my hand now, as she did when we first rode together in chariot in cloaks of fire. Her eyes are wide as they dart back and fore. I can't tell if she's looking for something or just trying to take it all in, make sense of what has happened.

When we get to the tower and into the lift, we seem to be the only ones who have returned. I worry for a moment that we – that I – have gone too far, that Haymitch or Effie or the other tributes have been detained and they will soon be coming for us. I dismiss the paranoid thought swiftly. Nothing would be more likely to cause an out and out rebellion from the Capitol's own citizens. They will be trying their hardest to return everything to normal, keep events on track as much as possible.

Katniss bundles me into the elevator, and the floor falls away from the glass bottom as we shoot up to the twelfth level. As Katniss drags me into the hallway it registers that this will be our last night before the arena. I stop, and Katniss' arm jerks against the dead weight. She looks back at me in confusion, but before she can say anything the elevator doors open again. Katniss is pushing in front of me, holding me behind her body to shield me.

But it is only Haymitch stepping forward from the elevator's glass interior.

Farewells are exchanged. I stumble through them numbly. And before I know it, Haymitch is gone again, and Katniss is dragging me down the hall to the door of her bedroom. I stutter something about needing a shower – which is true, but my mind is on the rooftop and a hope of granting myself some relief before spending a sleepless night wrapped around Katniss' body.

"Shower in my room," she hisses. Oh, yes. No route to embarrassment there.

As the door closes behind us I hear a soft but unmistakable click: the sound of a lock's tumbler falling into place. Of course, this is why Katniss would not let me go. And I wonder whether the same thing happened last year, if she had tried to get out again but had found the door locked.

"There are towels in the bathroom. I think the showers work the same way, don't they?" She's looking distractedly down at her dress, the long sleeves trailing to the floor, her slender body coated in inky black feathers.

I turn and poke my head into the bathroom, "Looks the same to me." Looking over my shoulder, I see she is struggling with her dress. "Is there a zipper?"

She looks befuddled for a moment, before realising I'm trying to help her. "I think so. There's something back there holding it together."

Katniss comes closer, and I'm grateful. My left leg is starting to ache below the knee, telling me it's time for bed and a rest. The prosthetic rubs a little with each step. It's only a dull pain, but I'm tired and grateful for a bit of help. My hands run over her back. The softness of the feathers is so like her hair, so like her naked skin. A natural sensation, like touching something wild and beautiful. All I have done is run my fingertips down her back, tracing the inward curve of her body, and the slight swell of her hips, and I can already feel a tightening in my groin. _This girl will be the death of me_, I think, before realising how morbidly true that sounds.

"Any luck?" she murmurs. I'm startled, almost forgetting I have a purpose back here. My fingers latch on to the small hidden tab of a zip, and I tug it slowly down, careful not to catch any of the feathers. The gown has served its purpose, but it would be a crime to ruin it. I have one last vision of her, elegant and refined and barely herself, the tiny downy feathers smoothing over the contours of her body, before she sheds this second skin and is left all herself. A simple pair of white panties, and her hair pinned and braided up. Despite feeding ourselves up for the occasion, her shoulder blades stick out, and her elbows are a little bony. She has rounded into a woman in the last year, though. Her hips flare slightly, but she will always have a slim petite frame. Katniss glances over her shoulder at me. She does not cover herself modestly as I would have expected, but she is clearly uncomfortable with me watching her.

"Sorry," I mutter, and retreat to the bathroom for my shower.

I kick the door shut behind me, stripping off my shirt and punching buttons to get the shower to work. I remove my pants, and ease into the shower. Paying no heed to my half-hard cock is easier than I expected, and my knee is burning enough to overtake the ache in my balls from too many ignored erections in one day. I soap and rinse, removing the makeup that's only subtle to the cameras. It makes my face too strange. Tonight is not for soaking – I want to get into bed too badly. I shut off the shower and ease out of the cubicle, picking up a towel and scrubbing it over my face and hair before wrapping it around my waist.

The cool air from the bedroom hits me as I leave the bathroom, triggering a shiver. Katniss is already in bed, the covers pulled up to her chin, her dark eyes watching me. There are no blushes. Nor does she try to hide her interest. Her eyes – I can almost feel the path of her gaze – travel over my bare chest, and down. I feel a stab of anxiety when they pause on my prosthetic.

Well. It's a part of me now. No point in dancing around it.

I sit on the bed beside her. It's always been dark when I've done this before, or Katniss has been three quarters asleep. I've never done it under her watchful eye. My fingers loosen straps and flick the switch which connects the limb's wires and chips to my own nervous system, allowing it to be intelligent enough that I barely limp and can run with ease. I push myself back, leaving this artificial part of me stood beside the bed.

I'm pretty sure I'm not blushing, but I can feel the tips of my ears are hot when I glance back at Katniss and see that she has been watching every movement. There is a pragmatic voice inside my head, telling me that this was not my fault, that it's nothing to be ashamed of. My petulant pride retaliates that no one, especially not a woman as strong as Katniss, would be anything but repelled by what they've just seen.

Her fingers break into this internal debate, as she gently runs her hand below my knee, touching the shiny scar tissue where my leg ends. "You're sore," she says.

"A bit. I've got the latest technology, apparently, but it's still not a part of me. It just rubs when I've had a long day."

"Does anything help?" Her hand curls around the inside of my knee. Her thumb is brushing higher. I vainly hope that this is not going to be my third banished erection of the day. _She has no idea. The effect she has._ Truer words were never spoken.

"Sleep helps." I move back onto the pillows, pulling her onto my chest. "Come on, we should sleep."

She is still running her hand so gently over my sore sensitised skin. Despite myself I have to admit it does feel good. I let out a long sigh, my eyes closing of their own accord.

"Peeta," she murmurs. When I open my eyes, her face is right there in front of me, her eyes sad again. She leans in and kisses me. It's slow and bittersweet. She kisses me as she did in the cave, with tentative laps of her tongue, and soft throaty barely-there sounds blown into me with each exhale. "I don't want to sleep." The words are spoken against my lips, so I feel them more than I hear them.

"What do you want?" It registers for the first time that she is naked. My hand skims up her bare arm, luxuriating in the softness of her skin, and over her shoulder my fingers map every bump of bone. I can see her face – another novelty after weeks in the darkened carriage of a train – and I can see the desire and sadness mixed strangely in her features.

She draws breath, and expels it. Her fingers play over my chest, like she is finger painting with the morphlings again. "I want you … to touch me the way you want to touch me. Like you love me."

_I __**do**__ love you,_ my head screams, but there is no way to convince her. No way without making her feel guilty. No way to make her understand that my loving her is really all that matters, that she could go a hundred years without reciprocating, without changing a thing about herself, and I would love her just the same.

But more than anything, her words are a release on my self-control. Not over the reactions of my body – when she looks at me a certain way or a particular thought flashes through my head, I'm going to get an erection whether I like it or not – but in the way I censor my actions towards her. I allow myself to properly embrace her. I pull her close, both hands flattening, palms smoothing over her back. I enjoy her heat against me, her small body bundled in close to mine. It is a treat, not worrying about scaring her off or pushing me away. We fit together so perfectly, her petite frame enclosed by my arms, her legs weaved between mine.

I shift onto my side, and she even smiles as she acquiesces something of her control, lying back on the pillows so untidy tendrils of her hair fan around her face. They are a black corona, a dark dangerous mirror image of the sun. I kiss her face, her brow and cheeks, her lips, as I did while she was sleeping. But now she is awake, and I see how she enjoys it. She is feline, eyes closed and shifting into me, encouraging my kisses. Then I dip lower into unknown territory. I am overwhelmed by my freedom, the ability to covet any part of her when I love every part so strongly. Her throat, where I first chastely kiss, then lathe my tongue. Her skin is salty-sweet, and she smells of almonds. Sighing beneath her ear grants a shiver in response, and her hand flexes around my arm. Daring, I nip at her clavicle, and kiss it quickly. Still she doesn't pull away. I'm giddy drunk on her, on the abundance of her. I'm trying to remember every moment, every touch and feel and taste, knowing that I will never be able to capture this moment but must hold it as something precious in my memory.

When I scoot lower on the bed, still holding myself carefully over her, and my kisses drop down to her breasts she makes her first noise. And then there is something entirely new I must try to index in my memory. All those nights with only one hard-won sound of pleasure, and now there is humming and sighing and whimpering. Her fingers rake through my hair, buried deep in the blonde curls. But, like me, she does not guide me. She holds on, as though her world is rocking and she needs me to keep her steady as my tongue flickers out over a puckered nipple before I suck it between my lips.

"Peeta!" she mewls, and I stop dead. My teeth had only grazed gently over her nipple. Was I too rough? Is it my turn to spoil everything? But her back is arching, and she's pulling me in towards her.

It occurs to me that there is a very basic way to see if she likes what I have wanted to do for so long, and as I brace my body with my left arm, the fingers of my right hand curl between her legs. Her thighs are sticky, the slippery evidence of her pleasure seems to be everywhere. My cock, though largely ignored, is throbbing, aching, pulsing with every muffled sound and press of her hips. When I slide two fingers inside of her and she keens in pleasure, I know with an animal instinct what I need – what we both need.

My balance is a bit impeded, but I am able to work my way back up her body, fitting my hips snuggly between hers. I can feel the slick heat of her slit against my prick, and groan into her neck, "I love you, Katniss."

She stiffens beneath me, but I barely notice. I'm kissing her still, every inch of skin I can reach, as I position our bodies to slot together.

Her hand is pressing on my chest, as though she's trying to push me off. I register that something is not right, before I hear her say, "Stop! Wait, not yet."

I blink through the haze of my arousal, but pull up as I see that she is breathing hard, gasping breaths like a fish plucked from the water. "It's ok," I tell her, smoothing her hair back from her forehead as I do when she has a nightmare. "What's wrong? Did I hurt you?"

"I can't do this," she says, her voice a single miserable note of disappointment – disappointment in me? No, I cast the thought away, knowing how much she had enjoyed what we were doing. "I can't do this," she repeats.

There is a very small, tight, cruel part of me that is angry. It is dismissed before it can take hold, but I can't deny that it was there.

Rolling to the side, I bundle her back onto my chest. "It's ok. You don't have to do anything, Katniss."

She sniffs. I don't look down just in case, because she hates crying and she won't want me to see. "But you really wanted to."

"I didn't think I was the only one," I say through gritted teeth before I can stop myself.

This draws a chuckle, which is a relief. Her hand is playing over my cock, which has refused to deflate despite everything. She slowly strokes me, and I wonder if she knows how teasing those slow strokes are when I was moments from burying myself inside her. Even as we lie together catching our breaths and the demanding fires of lust start to ebb away, I can feel her thumb slide through the juices she left on my cock and a fresh stab of arousal makes me throb. "I just got scared. Sorry. I didn't know if I was ready yet."

To point out that there is no time left in which to be ready would be too cruel, for both of us. I push the idea of going any further from my mind. Instead I concentrate on the rhythmic squeeze of her hand around my prick, losing myself in sensation. "It doesn't matter," I say, and I'm glad that I'm not lying. It doesn't matter.

She pulls my hand between her legs, and I am proud and gratified again at how wet she is. We fall into our familiar rhythms – splintered only by the flexing of her hand when I brush the sensitive side of her nub, or by my fingers freezing in the moments when she works the head of my cock. I come first, which is hardly surprising, and am pleased that I can focus my full attention on her, sucking and nibbling her breasts as my fingers work her to climax, mewling my name.

When we burrow down beneath the covers, we are a sticky mess. Her arms wrap around me, and mine around her. She kisses my neck, and I can't think of anything in the whole of my life that has made me so happy. _I wish we could freeze this moment_. I said it on the roof, but there are so many moments today I want to freeze and live in for the rest of eternity. Katniss, resplendent and on fire, the pallid white of her gown disintegrating into the mockingjay feathers. Katniss calling out my name in pleasure, egging me on, wanting me. Katniss asleep and peaceful in my lap.

It's been a good day. A good last day.


	6. 48 Hours Later

**48 Hours Later**

To say it's been an eventful forty-eight hours would be an understatement. I died, apparently. And I nearly died. And then I nearly died again. This is the stuff of my nightmares, though the many methods of my near-deaths are refreshingly original. Electric shock, nerve-damaging mist, rabid monkey muttations. The Gamemakers have really pulled out all the stops this year. And those are only some of the tricks designed to shorten the lifespans of we twenty-four lucky tributes.

It was the electric shock that killed me. Or we think it was an electric shock. I don't remember any of it, which is actually something of a relief. I like to think that when I eventually die here for good, my mind will fade to black and there will be no pain. Now there is a dull aching in my chest. My heart keeps skipping strangely, making me feel like I can't properly catch my breath. Add this to the aching, itching scabs left by the mist, and the various wounds left by the monkeys and it might almost have been a relief if Finnick hadn't revived me.

Katniss and I are keeping watch on the beach. We are both reduced to our underwear, the strange blue jumpsuits we wore on entering the arena proving less than useless. It's too hot to be uncomfortable about our near nudity. I've stopped even being self-conscious about my prosthetic. And I have become accomplished at taking no notice of her body. It's a surprise to me that, despite imminent death and pain coursing throughout my body, it's still far too easy to get preoccupied by her slender, athletic frame. We're all covered in various scabs and wounds, tinted green by the medicine Haymitch sent us. But in the dim light, all I see is contours, smooth curves, shadowed dips that should be explored. Even like this, which must be Katniss at her worst, she is utterly beautiful.

I have been trying to convince her that, whatever she and Haymitch might have agreed, she needs to win this contest. She needs to survive. Not me. I have given her the locket, carefully calculated to remind her of everything – everyone – she will leave behind if she dies. It's a morbid and a cruel thing, and I'm not particularly proud of myself. But this is a means to an ends. And she needs to understand.

"No one really needs me," I say, speaking the truth. My goodbyes have been said, and no one expects to see me again. The most I could hope is that Katniss might miss me, for a time, before she finds she can take precisely the same cold comfort I have provided from Gale. And perhaps, with him, it wouldn't be cold.

There is a long pause. She's struggling with something, I can see it in the flickering muscle of her jaw. I hadn't meant to sound self-pitying, but I find myself waiting for her to smack some sense into me, or come out with the perfect counter and outdo me at my own game. This game that we seem to constantly be playing. Who is more important. Who deserves to live the longest. Who is needed the most, and by whom.

_No one really needs me._

"I do," she whispers. She swallows. She won't meet my eye. "I need you."

It's so obviously a lie I'm tempted to laugh in her face. But it's the kind of lie that just makes me very sad. She's saying what she thinks I want to hear. Her arsenal against me is flattery, and I'm only disappointed that after the last year she doesn't know me better.

There are so many arguments against her that it's almost difficult to pick just one.

Before I can say anything at all, her lips are pressed against mine again. This is a cruel new piece of manipulation, one I would have thought too dirty for her too attempt. I don't kiss her back. I stay entirely still, though everything within me screams to make the most of this. Who knows if this will be the last time?

There are subtleties to Katniss' kissing. There are kisses where she holds her breath, and kisses where she'll sigh into me. Simple pecks were commonplace during the Hunger Games, but as we got to know each other and grew more comfortable, she would slowly slide her lips along mine. Her kisses would linger. And sometimes she would pepper me with kisses, if she was happy or teasing (or pretending). She would hardly ever touch me, though I buried my hands in her hair and pulled her close. Her hands would only ever rest primly on my shoulders.

It is knowing this detail, this variety, that makes me surprised that this kiss is entirely new. It is … warm. She is warm against my lips. Warm and soft as she presses into me. I feel the flicker of her eyelash against my cheek, and see her eyes close and open again. She is looking at me, but I don't think she's calculating my reaction. Her fingers creep to the nape of my neck, and she grazes at my scalp with her short, bitten nails. Breathing soft and slow through her nose, her lips become leisurely against mine. They draw me out, teasing and coaxing all at once.

I don't want this. I don't want to know how good she has become at pretending to be in love with me.

Each time I try to talk my way out of this embrace, she is ready with her own retort. She doesn't need to speak a word to keep me silent. Her kisses cut off every avenue of escape, until I have to ask myself: Why is she trying so hard?

Shortly after this there are no more thoughts. There are only our bodies, working their way together again. Her arms and legs wrapped around me, and mine around her. Were this her bed in the carriage or back in the Capitol, our hands might slip between us and slide into the private clefts that we know so well by now. But here on this warm beach, that will surely be the site of at least one of our deaths, my hands smooth only up her back and hers only twine in my hair. These long, slow kisses are more intimate than any time I have worked her to orgasm. I feel her lips form my name, but never hear the word, and I return the favour. We murmur our kisses for an eternity.

All at once there's a blinding flash, and Katniss is gone. Or rather, her lips have vanished from mine.

Staring into the dark I can't even make her out. Then the sky splits and a second flash of lightning illuminates her bright white, like a ghost. In that split second I capture the memory of her, like a photograph. Her lips bruised and parted, eyes wide with the pupils dilated, and her forehead is utterly clear of the stress and worry lines that I thought were now ingrained on its surface.

I lean in one more time and kiss her. This time, when I whisper her name, I think she hears it. When she pulls away, she's smiling. And it looks real.

It looks so real.

"I can't sleep any more," says Finnick behind me. Were this any other time I might jump apart from her, like we'd been caught. It would look good for the cameras. Star-crossed lovers caught in a private moment – I can almost hear the indulgent chuckle of Claudius Templesmith providing the commentary. But it really feels like we're not pretending any more. It's a dangerous feeling. It's like not caring whether you die. With this feeling warm and snug inside me, I feel I have every right to sit on this beach kissing the woman I love while I still can. "One of you should rest."

I can't imagine sleeping now.

Perhaps Finnick has noticed he's interrupted something. He sounds amused when he adds, "Or both of you. I can watch alone."

If we go and lie down together, I know our chaste kisses will turn into more. We will end up a sweaty, sticky, uncomfortable mess. And there's something sordid about it that I can't bear just now. I am too scared she will retreat once more into her indifferent self, that her sad look will return as she watches me buck into her hands, and I will never have this warm strong woman back. Now I have held this Katniss, I don't want to have to settle for the woman who wants only release and sleep. And I don't trust her to carry on wanting me after all that has passed before.

"It's too dangerous." My voice sounds strange, like it's coming from someone else. I realise Katniss' fingers are still playing over the nape of my neck. "I'm not tired. You lie down, Katniss."

My hands run down her arms. My lips twitch into a smile as my thumbs catch briefly on the straps of her bra. Underwear. Something I've not encountered before, as Katniss sleeps in nother or next-to nothing. A memory flashes through my mind, my brothers talking in hushed voices about taking off a girl's bra with one hand. Gideon, the eldest, saying he could do it without even taking her shirt off. No one else believed him.

I take her hands in mine and we stand to walk back up the beach to the make-shift shelter Finnick cobbled together. Johanna and Beetie at least appear to be sound asleep. Katniss sits a little away from them. I glance over my shoulder. Finnick is down by the shore watching the lightning. But his presence reminds me his are not the only eyes that could be watching. I wonder how many cameras are trained on us at this moment. The thought makes me sigh.

Katniss pulls gently at my wrist. How I would love to lie beside her, just for a moment, and see if that warm Katniss can be drawn back out. I shake my head just slightly. She raises my hand to her lips, kissing the inside of my wrist in a way that makes me ache for her. It's almost more than I can stand, and I see hope light up in her eyes when I kneel beside her. But as much as I want her wrapped safe in my arms, to hide her away from the rest of the world, I cannot shake the knowledge of prying eyes. Our moments – these moments, the ones where she is really mine – should be private. But the Capitol has taken that, too.

The locket is suddenly heavy round my neck. I remove it, and slide it over her head, pressing it to her chest. My fingers note, with familiarity, the firm swell of her breast. But my hand slips lower, resting in many ways more intimately on her belly. I think of my lie, which may or may not save her life. I think of how badly I want it, one day, to be true. Even though it can never happen, because of all those prying eyes and the malice they intend. One or both of us will soon be dead.

"You're going to make a great mother, you know," I say before I can force the words back inside of me. But they are out, and I see something like betrayal in her eyes.

There is a strange, cruel poetic justice in her thinking that my kisses were a false manipulation. She should know I'm not that good a liar.

I can't stand to see that look, to think it might be the last I see, as I never know which moment will be the last. So I lean down for one last kiss. Relief and desire and the twisted feeling that none of this is fair flood me as she answers with that same coursing warmth. It's a wrench to pull away, as she is whispering my name once more. But her eyelids are heavy, and Finnick isn't safe keeping watch alone.

"Sleep well, Katniss," I tell her. But I think she is already asleep.


	7. Hanging On

**Hanging On**

To begin with, I try to hang on. I can't say how long I manage to keep doing this. Time is completely arbitrary here. I have no windows. Even if I did, I wouldn't trust them. They could so easily speed up or slow down my timing. I don't know how often they knock me out, or how long it lasts each time. There is so much I don't know.

This is what I do know.

Beetie left me in the jungle. He got me safely out of the twelve o'clock segment of the clock arena, and said he had to go back to check on the trap. I waited for thirty heartbeats. Then I heard screaming. It wasn't her at first, but then it was her and it was nowhere near time for the mockingjays to start their cruel tricks. So I started running, as best I could, back to the trap. But the jungle seemed stacked against me. My prosthetic caught up in the undergrowth, weeds and thorns ripping at my skin as though trying to drag me back, away from her. "Katniss!" I shouted, as loud as I could. I should never have let her out of my sight, and now whatever they've done to her is my fault. "Katniss!"

When she returns my screamed, "Peeta!" I can tell she is so close. I will never know how close I was to taking hold of her, and never letting go.

That's when the lightning hit. But there was more than a bolt. There was an explosion that shattered the entire arena letting fresh clean air flood the jungle. More explosions and blinding lights - almost like fireworks. But the first bolt had knocked me to the ground.

There were hovercrafts, and I remember distantly wondering which of the tributes had died, if I was the last one left.

I might have passed out. Or they might have knocked me out. Because when I woke, I was here in the blinding white lab that looks like a hospital room, but definitely isn't.

So this is what I know: Someone in the arena betrayed me. Katniss tried to get to me but couldn't. It's not much, but they're trying so hard to push every concrete thing from me that I cling on to these two facts.

And this is what they've told me: There is full scale rebellion in the districts. District Thirteen was never destroyed, and they're backing up the rebels. Katniss has been one of them all along, and is fronting the rebellion. They say she intended to kill me when my usefulness petered out. Of these statements, I only really believe the part about District Thirteen. This is because they didn't tell me directly. I overheard it when they thought I was knocked out.

_District Thirteen ... dead by morning._

I try very hard not to say these words out loud as they mine me for other information. It's the only thing of value I've collected, and I'm determined to cling onto it.

So far they haven't hurt me, not as such. I'm disoriented, and I'm tired of their questions, but not hurt. I know it will come, though. I can hear a woman screaming quite clearly, and her voice is familiar. For a long time (or a short time, I have no idea) I thought it was Katniss. But they wouldn't ask me so many questions about her if she's right next door, making the kind of noises that suggest she'll tell them anything.

Katniss. I try to hang on to Katniss, as well. They're telling me lies about her. At the moment they're not very persuasive. But they know it's hurting me, that I'm starting to get confused. It shouldn't be this easy. I think they're drugging me. Well, no, I know they're drugging me. I'm never hungry, but I never eat either. There's no pain, when I'm certain that there should be. Everything is too bright. I want to know what they're giving me.

To hold on to her, I tell myself stories. Except they're not stories - I don't think they're stories - they're real. I start with easy things, like giving her the burnt bread when we were little. From there I bring it forwards. The reaping, the interviews, the Hunger Games. Kissing her in the cave, deliriously happy because I was certain I would soon die. Lying in a warm bed with my arms wrapped around her. Touching her body.

This is where I sometimes wonder if it's just a story that I've made up in my head.

One day when I wake, there are no restraints, no tubes, and no wires. When they come in, the men in the long white coats, they're smiling genially. Like I'm a victor again. Like the past I-don't-know-how-long hasn't happened. They dress me in a suit that could only have come from Portia, and one of the tangents of my mind wonders whether she is still alive. My hair is made tidy. I'm not coated in makeup, but I am presentable. When I pass myself in a mirror, I see me and not the shadow of myself that I half expect.

We walk through white tiled hallways that twist and turn. I try to count each turn in an attempt to map the place where I am held, but I quickly lose track. By the time we reach an elevator, they could have taken me in an enormous circle and I wouldn't know. The elevator is also tiled in white. There are no buttons inside, just more shiny bright surfaces. So when the doors open, the colour of the rooms beyond is like an assault on my senses. It disorientates me further.

Crimson carpets, and black cameras like beetles with shiny telescopic eyes; Caesar Flickerman's bright blue hair and ridiculously artificial features. He's asking me questions, and the answers come out all on their own. I'm slightly puzzled. I feel like a puppet. I hear the questions, and puzzle out a way to respond - but before I can, an answer that I hadn't considered is spewing from my mouth. Is this some strange new programming? Or am I no longer in control of my own body? Am I even here? It occurs to me that the real me really is a wasted shadow, and the normal looking young man I saw in the mirror belongs entirely to the Capitol.

I'm very tempted to panic, but that doesn't seem to be an option either. I can feel the panic, but it's distant. It doesn't cause the normal elevated heartbeat or sweaty palms. So instead, I focus very carefully on proving that I am really still me.

My opportunity comes when Caesar asks me if I have a message for Katniss, if she's watching. I hear the Capitol's spiel come from my mouth, but concentrate hard on getting out the one thing of use that I know, the only thing that I have stolen since being here without their knowledge. Eventually - and I even manage to make it fit in with the Capitol's words - I manage to say it. "District Thirteen ... dead by morning."

I know I've done the right thing when all hell breaks loose. Someone hits me, I think. I hear a crack, and the ground flies up to meet me. But all I feel is a vague satisfaction. I'm not entirely theirs. Not yet, anyway.

When I wake up the room is black. I can feel the needles in the back of my hand, so I know I must be back in my white room. But I can't see anything. If I concentrate, I think I can hear something. Voices. The harder I listen, the more I focus on picking out the words, the clearer they become. Until I recognise the voice.

"You don't have any competition, anywhere."

Deprived of any other sensory stimulation, that voice floods my body. I remember so sharply the moment she said it. I can feel the pain in the leg that is no longer there, hear the rain pouring down outside. She is hungry and dirty and exhausted, but she is beautiful. Her dark eyes are looking at me from beneath long eyelashes. There's half a smile to her lips-

Her lips wrapped around the head of my cock, as her tongue presses against the sensitive flesh.

I frown, physically jerking my head to bring my mind back to the original train of thought. Confused, I try to remember if memories of her have always skipped so easily from one to another.

"I do. I need you."

Hot on the beach, so tired, her hair dry from the salt of the water where she was swimming earlier. Her skin is pale in the moonlight, it seems to gleam. Katniss' eyes are so sad, and she won't look at me properly as she leans in to kiss me-

Kissing her hard as our bodies meet, as I thrust inside of her. She's moaning into my mouth, urging me onwards, but I don't know how long I can last at this frantic pace. She feels so good, I never want it to end, never want to be anywhere but here, between her legs, kissing her.

No.

That never happened, it's not real. A fantasy?

I try to remember if I ever imagined that, ever had a fevered moment alone during which that flash existed in my head. I can't place it. Instead, I try focussing like I did during the interview. I take a memory which I know to be true, and hold on to it.

On the beach again, cracking open the shellfish Finnick brought up from the sea bed. A single gleaming pearl lies amongst the flesh. I pick it out, rolling it in my fingers. I smile, thinking of Katniss' slippery little pearl, how I have rolled that between my fingers to make her come.

Did I really think that? Concentrate on the things that are certain. Think about what happened, not what I thought about it.

I gave the pearl to Katniss, on the beach. She was smiling. She said something about Effie Trinket. Or one of us did. Or perhaps it was just another thing I thought but didn't say. I'm sure it has never been this difficult to separate my imagination from the concrete truth of my memory.

I gave the pearl to Katniss, on the beach, and she was pleased. I asked her to marry me. She was happy and giddy. She said she needed me. I lay between her thighs, pushing into her for the first time, and she held onto the pearl and whispered my name again and again against my lips until the word began to echo my heartbeat, but my heartbeat is irregular because I died and Finnick kissed me back to life.

Is any of this true?

This memory is whittled down and down, removing every part which makes me doubt myself, until I am left with nothing but the pearl between my finger and thumb, pressing it into Katniss' hand as she smiles. These two seconds of memory are the only thing I'm certain are even real. I want to panic, scream, cry, but I can't do anything. I try to make a sound, but no noise comes out. I find myself wishing that they would turn on the lights. If I just had something to look at, I could be certain that I am still real.

There's a loud clunk. A light flickers on. First it is only a small dot of white. But it then quickly expands, filling a flat square. It dimly lights the white room and, more importantly, I can see down my body – my chest, arms, stomach covered by a thin gown, my legs sticking out at the end, one ending abruptly and the other extending down to my foot. All of me is tightly strapped to the surface on which I'm lying, and I wonder why I couldn't feel the straps before. For some time, the square just shows a blank, flat light. Then the light flickers into life. It becomes darker, and the lights form images. It looks just like shades of grey, but when a face becomes clear I see that it is just filmed somewhere dark. The face has bright blue eyes. They are my eyes. That person is me.

A hiss and a crackle, and then the sound kicks in. The camera pulls out as I talk. I'm talking about a girl with two braids, standing on a stool in the middle of a classroom and singing the Valley Song. I remember that day. It makes me smile. And I know that the second figure on the film is Katniss. She's dirty and tired and scared, just the way I remember her. They have filtered out the sound of the downpour outside the cave, but I know that it should be there. I can almost feel the cold damp seeping into my skin, chilling me as I force myself to eat and stay awake as Katniss says I must.

"I don't have much competition here," the me on the screen says.

My lips move along to Katniss' reply.

"You don't have much competition, anywhere."

There is a strange cold sensation on the back of my hand. No, not on. _In_. I look down at the needle that protrudes from my skin. There is a strange green fluid sliding through the plastic tube which feeds into it. I have only a moment to frown, before a too-familiar sensation takes over. Terror. Absolute terror, for no discernible reason. Breathing heavily, I look back up at the screen as mine and Katniss' faces close together. The edges of the screen are sparkling, as though covered in a thousand drops of water, refracting the light. The me on the screen has closed his blue eyes. Katniss is smiling. Grinning. Her teeth are lengthening into fangs, as I close in on her, completely unaware that Katniss is about to rip my face open.

Now I can scream, and I do, until my throat is raw. Again and again, Katniss rips at my face. The me in front of me – or has it just been me all along? – doesn't run away from her. I just let her bite into me – too blinded to realise what she really is, what she's doing to me.

"SHE'S A MUTT!" I scream into the room. I can feel tears sliding down my face, or is it blood? "SHE'S A MUTT!" The words ring in my ears until I can't tell whether I screamed it out loud or in my head.

It is hours, days, months before I am lucky enough to black out.


	8. Rescue and Rehab

**Author's Note: **Although she will probably never read it, this chapter is dedicated to Vanessa – for all the patience she showed me and the techniques she taught me to make myself better.

**Rescue and Rehab**

The restraints are still there. They weren't initially but, if you listen to the way they tell it, I brought this on myself. But the lights are on now, which is an improvement over the place I've left. People come and go a lot. There's not the chance to be left with myself, with my own confusion, to lead myself into the circles to which I had almost grown accustomed. I don't know any of the doctors; they're all from District Thirteen. But they're being honest. They tell me I'm not allowed to see anyone I know because I can't be trusted.

Here I can tell the passage of time. Everything seems to happen on a schedule. There is a strict lights out policy, and they are out for a solid eight hours before flickering on again all together. The patterns of routine are a relief. They are something solid and stable.

The more I embrace the routines, the more I begin to realise that they are the only stable thing about me. My mind wanders. There are moments when I think I am having nightmares, but I find I am wide awake.

"The trackerjacker venom was administered in an abnormally high dose. It's going to take a long time to flush it through your system."

They tell me about herbs they're giving me to boost my kidneys and liver, the ways they are trying to make my body more effective at mending itself. They do not often mention the thing that seems to almost scare them.

When I first arrived here, I tried to kill Katniss. I didn't manage it. But I'm pretty sure I'll get another opportunity to finish her off.

Mutt. Stinking, lying, vicious mutt.

Within a few days, my body is healed. I am gaining strength. They say my mind is still unstable, but I manage to keep the thread of reality better than any time I can remember. So they start to tell me things that are harder to understand. That the Capitol abducted me and have been torturing me; that they have altered the way my mind works; that they have changed my memories. This is where it all gets very confusing.

These people have been utterly honest, to the point of bluntness. I have no reason to disbelieve them (Except for their insistence that Katniss is anything other than a murdering, backstabbing, venomous mutt) so I believe what they are telling me. In a purely rational light, it makes sense.

The problem is that in my head … it is almost like there are two people. There is the one that the doctors like, who nods and understands everything they're saying. They have given me tests, logic tests, to make sure that particular functions are still working. I can pass every one of them. Spatial awareness, logic, colour coding, all mutts are animals but not all animals are mutts. That kind of thing. And I can do it, I make them very happy when I can do all this and I can repeat back everything that has happened since my arrival here.

But then there is the other part of me. It is the part that imagines, remembers, creates. Sometimes they ask me to remember something that happened before the Capitol abducted me, and it is so fuzzy there is almost nothing there. In other cases, the memories are cruelly visceral. The doctors ask me to tell them about the reaping. I tell them quickly how Katniss chose me from the crowd, so she would have the pleasure of killing me herself. There was a lot of frowning that day. Some memories are more complicated. There will be two images, one laid over the other, so I don't know which is real and I just start getting very angry – at myself, at the Capitol, but usually at Katniss for the all-consuming reason that _everything_ is her fault.

Every day we complete an exercise. They tell me to think about Katniss, any memory at all. I'm not to tell them what I'm remembering. Instead, they want to know how I physically feel.

At first when we play this game, it makes me so wretchedly furious that I cannot even form words. I scream and rave, flashes of her blood-soaked fangs rushing through my head, her clawed hands ripping at my body, her almost-human eyes glinting in the dark as she watches me sleeping, controlling my nightmares. Slowly, though. Slowly, I am able to grunt an adjective, or a body part. I can tell them my heart is racing. I can tell them I want to be sick. I can tell them there is a tight ball in my throat, like when I want to cry but can't. And one day, when I am able to say all these things and many more, the doctor who is taking the exercise says, "And what do all these reactions mean, Peeta? When do you feel like this? When have you felt like this, without Katniss?"

Because Katniss' name has been mentioned, and I am already remembering her trying to kill me one night on the Victory Tour, it takes me some time to straighten out their question in my head. I think back over what I am experiencing: shortness of breath, pounding heart, sweating, nausea, adrenaline rush, need to cry, compunction to scream. What do these feelings mean?

There is a flash of memory from when I was very young. My brothers were laughing, they were carrying me easily despite my struggles, carrying me towards the roaring furnace of the oven. I wanted to scream and run, but I couldn't because I was too-

"I'm frightened," I gasp out, as though this realisation has taken a great deal of effort. The pathetic thing is, it really has. But now I've said it, it seems so obvious.

"And do you remember being taught about trackerjackers? You must have been told about them. Before the Hunger Games? Or perhaps in school?"

I nod slowly.

"What did you learn about trackerjackers?" It pains me that the doctor is speaking as though to a small boy. I wonder how pathetic I look in my hyper-frightened state.

"They make you hallucinate. Like a nightmare. But it's always about the things you fear."

"Very good, Peeta. Very good. So do you know why you are afraid?"

It takes almost all of my self-control not to scream that it is because Katniss is here, probably just outside the room, and at any moment she could come back and begin a fresh slow torture. But with a mental agility that used to come easily, I _choose_ to take the rational train of thought. The words come slowly, but they do come. "Because the trackerjacker venom that was in my blood stream. They used it to make me afraid. All of the time."

The doctor frowns slightly. "But you aren't afraid all of the time. When we talk about when you arrived here, or the history of Panem, or about your treatments. You're fine then, aren't you? What is it that we do in these sessions, that makes you feel so afraid?"

I know the answer they want me to give. There is something very strong holding onto that word, refusing to admit that my imagination and memory could be in the wrong. It is only a strong desire to ever be allowed out of this room again that gives me the courage to grind out her name, "Katniss." Dirty mutt, I add in my head, as consolation to myself.

That's definitely a look of triumph. Doctor is smiling. I have been a good patient today.

As I am served my dinner, the continuing treatment is explained to me. They're quite open about it, which is a pleasant surprise. It doesn't occur to me until later that this in itself is probably a test, to see whether my mind can take the idea of getting better.

"The important thing is to set goals," they tell me. "We have goals, which are probably different to yours. We would like for you to not be unnecessarily afraid any more. We would like for you to be in a stable enough state that we don't need to restrain you, to be able to continue the things you used to enjoy. And eventually see some of the people you used to know."

They don't say it, but I know they're thinking about Katniss. That's never going to happen. I will never, ever sit calmly in a room with her. I will try to kill her, every chance I get, because it is one of my few certainties that she would do exactly the same to me.

"Peeta? Do you have any goals?"

"I'd like to paint again," I say before even realising it. But the moment the words are released into the room, I realise it's true. I would like to paint again.

Doctors smile. "That's good. That's definitely an achievable goal. So we'll work on that."

After twelve more days (they give me a calendar once they realise how much I like to be able to track the time passing) I'm allowed to spend supervised time without my restraints. This means that as long as there are two doctors present I can exercise or draw with crayons or play cards. I take up the offer to draw sometimes, but the crayons aren't as intuitive as my paints. I can't get the colours to blend right, and end up getting frustrated. But after being tied down in one place for so long, it's refreshing just to be able to stand to talk to the doctors; to be able to walk around the room and look at things, ask questions about my surroundings. It is a new kind of mental freedom, one that I had not properly realised was lost.

With my crayons, I write my goals, and what I must do to achieve them:

To paint again, with proper paints – must demonstrate enough restraint to be safe with appliances that could be used as weapons (On target for trial in four days)

To bake – Need to be able to go into public spaces like the kitchen without risk of causing myself of anyone else harm (Not close to ready yet, re-assess next week)

To leave the compound, maybe start training – Prove through social interaction that I am reliable in an open space without constant surveillance (Long-term goal)

To sort through my family's things – Need to be secure enough in my memories that I am not likely to be triggered by things I see that might remind me of K and might make me lash out (Long-term goal).

This list is peppered with my new vocabulary. Trigger. Social interaction. They are words that have developed new meanings as I come to understand – or to try to understand – what has happened to my mind.

Three days after this, I am back in the restraints. The doctors want to try something, and they don't know how I'll react. They don't have to force me into the familiar straps. My rational mind understands that they are necessary in case I am 'triggered' – I see something that brings up one of the memories or thoughts that frightens me, and my fear reaction causes me to become dangerous to myself or those around me. It helps, sometimes, if I repeat things in my head the way the doctors say them. It makes them more concrete and more reliable, if I know that the words are not necessarily being created by my unstable brain.

"Delly is going to come and see you. From District Twelve. Do you remember her?"

Flashes of a bright, sunny girl. Always thinks the best of everyone. Smiling and laughing. I prod around the memories gently, but nothing jumps out to bite me. So I nod slowly. "Yes, I remember. That would be nice." They look relieved.

Their relief doesn't last long. There are approximately three minutes in which I am trying my best to be Normal Peeta. I don't even properly remember how Normal Peeta behaves, but I do my best. After these three minutes, I devolve back into a screaming wreck, straining at the restraints, while Delly flees from the room.

I know all this, because I am shown a tape of it. And I know I am getting better when I feel ashamed of how I must have made that poor girl feel.

"Do you know what went wrong, Peeta?" I am asked.

"Katniss," I snarl. Obviously it's her fault.

"Delly didn't mention Katniss. She was specifically instructed not to. You pushed her in Katniss' direction. Can you see that you did that?"

They are asking the logic questions, the ones to make sure that the rational part of me is in charge and I'm capable of following a sequence of events without my imagination taking over. I grind my teeth, fighting down irritation. They're trying to help me. I have to let them. "Yes," I say, without snarling.

"Why do you think you did that, Peeta?"

I can't answer this question. It's too difficult. Answering it would mean thinking about Katniss, and I do not want to give the thoughts that terrify me an opportunity to surface.

But I'm not allowed to escape the question. They ask me every day, until I am so fed up of it I have a stab at an answer. "She's really important in my head!" I blurt out.

The doctors look stunned for a moment, possibly because I've actually given an answer after days of trying fruitlessly to wring one from me. "Go on," on says softly. The others are poised with pens over pads.

"In my head, everything always comes back to her. It's like a loop. Whatever I try to think of, she's always there at the end of it. If my train of thought as a really long corridor with lots of doors, she's behind every single one. I can't get away from her. She's stuck in there!"

When they play _this_ video back, I sound miserable and petulant. None of them say it to me directly, but there are mutters and whispers. They say it is because I loved her. And it's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.


	9. The Lady with The Braid

**The Lady with The Braid**

Time is ticked off on my calendar, days to weeks. And I make progress. I am allowed drawing materials. I am allowed visitors.

It is a surprise when Delly pops her head back around my door. I had thought she would avoid me for the rest of forever, after the way I scared her. And understandably she keeps her distance for a while. But I am fine. I make an active effort not to push her towards Katniss in case I cannot control my reaction. Now that it has been pointed out to me, I see the twists and turns of my mind that try to drag me back to her terrifying figure. And recognising them is half the battle. I can stop myself before her pinched, vicious face rears up in my mind.

Instead, we talk about her new life in District Thirteen, how she and the others from home are settling in. The doctors have given me some idea of those who made the evacuation, but Delly is able to give me a lot more detail. I don't press her about my family. After last time I'm desperate to make a good impression, not just on her but on the doctors, and on myself. I want to be able to see that I have made progress.

When Delly's visits become more regular, they try me with other visitors. Then eventually, they try me with Haymitch. This visit is very difficult. It takes a lot of willpower to keep from talking about Katniss. Aside from the Hunger Games, it is the only thing we really have in common. But Haymitch is very good at skirting around her. He can tell me more about the politics of what is happening, which is interesting and pleasantly distracting. I find myself with a map of Panem in my mind, each district marked black for the Capitol or blue for the rebels. I think that it is the first thing my mind has created where Katniss does not exist. When I tell the doctors about this, they are very pleased. All of my paintings have been her – or the version of her that haunts my nightmares. They make it clear that there's no real similarity.

One day I am asked to go back into the restraints. "We're going to try you with a new tape."

It's all they'll tell me. But I know now that the restraints are for my own good, and they would not ask me into them if it wasn't necessary.

The screen flickers to life. A grey landscape. Everything is covered in ashes. The camera pans taking in the monochrome building shells, carts, debris, to a fence and some green beyond. "Home," I whisper. It's District Twelve. It's what's left of my home. The next breath is very difficult to drag in. My mind paints colour and details into the bleakness, re-creating what I know – or what I am fairly sure – used to be there.

A jump cut occurs, which makes me think they've cut out some stuff they don't want me to see.

At first, I don't really understand what they're showing me. On the screen is a tree with a low branch, dappled in sunshine. On the branch sits a small bird, a mockingjay. Next to the bird is a young woman. She has black hair in a long braid, and she's wearing a black jump suit with white under the arms. She's singing to the bird, a very sad, haunting song that I don't know. There's something about her that's familiar. I pay close attention. From the way they're watching me, I know the doctors are waiting for a reaction. I just don't know what kind they're expecting, if I'm performing the way I need to in order to 'progress'. Her nose is long and straight. Her eyes are dark, and they have heavy shadows beneath them. She looks like she hasn't slept in weeks, and her skin looks sallow. Her voice is quite pleasant. The bird certainly seems enchanted. But there's something scrawny and closed off about her. I decide I don't like her.

After two verses have been sung, I look to the doctors for guidance. "Why are you showing me this?" I ask.

There are frowns reflected on each of their faces. One inches forward. "Don't you recognise her, Peeta?"

I look again. But there's no fresh information available. "Is she from Twelve? Should I know her from school?"

"Peeta, this is Katniss."

The mention of her name makes my jaw tighten, as I fight off a wave of nauseating fear at the images that rush to my mind. But they are all beast-women, with flashing razor teeth and claws dripping with blood. They are not this tired, sad little girl. "That's not her," I tell them, though I'm hardly sure myself. For the first time in a long while, my mind is starting to question itself, the truth and my imagination are blurring into one again and I'm struggling to hold on to what is real. As my arms tense they meet the biting hold of my restraints, and I know they must be telling the truth. It's the only reason they'd restrain me for this.

"You're doing really well, Peeta," I hear a doctor say, though her voice seems tinny and distant. "Start listing the things you can see, that are real."

From between gritted teeth I start my list, "I can feel the restraints, and I can see them, they're green fabric bands, and they're around my wrists and arms. I can see the television screen, and there's a girl on it who's ... who's supposed to be..."

"What else, Peeta? What else apart from the television?"

"There are four doctors. One of you has a hypodermic. Two shelving units, they have books on them and a mirror and some metal things that I don't know what they are. I can smell disinfectant because they were cleaning this morning." My eyes roll around to find something else, but it's working. My breathing is starting to slow, and my mind is starting to fall back into place. "There's a black leather chair, and a wooden bowl with some herbs in. I can smell them, but I don't know what they are. I can hear someone talking next door. I can see the mirror, the big one on the wall."

"That's very good Peeta. Are you ok now?" I nod slowly.

They've paused the video. If I glance quickly, I can look at the screen. The girl – Katniss – is frozen in mid-song. Mouth open, eyebrows arched, looking fixedly at the mockingjay. I swallow and breathe. "I'm trying to remember her. I'm trying to fit her into my mind. Sometimes it fits, but not really. Like someone I met when I was very young, and there's just a sort of blank face where they should be."

"That's because your memory has over-ridden her with the nightmares the Capitol fed you. Can you look at her more closely, or is it too much?"

I can. I can look at her. Because even knowing this is Katniss, it isn't the one I remember. I don't know this girl. "Yes, I can look at her."

"It must be very strange. Seeing the thing you've been so scared of. Are you still scared of her?"

I shake my head slowly. "This isn't the thing I've been scared of," I try to explain. "She never looks like this in my head. Doesn't look anything like this."

"That's good to know." The doctor smiles, as another turns off the screen. "But I think that's enough for today."

I couldn't agree more.

My nightmares return. Since I have been in District Thirteen they have been there, but I don't remember them. I jolt awake sometimes dripping with sweat, marked by the restraints which I still sleep in – mostly to keep me from falling off the bed. But tonight it is all crystal clear in my head.

The girl from the video (I still can't get used to calling her Katniss) is lying beside me on a bed. Everything is rocking gently, and I can hear and rush and rumble that makes me think we are moving. Maybe a train? Something like that. She is not so much lying next to me as sprawled across me. Her head is nestled on my shoulder, black hair covering her face and falling over my chest. It tickles a little, but it's not annoying. Her arm is thrown across my stomach, and one of her legs is in between mine. I couldn't move if I wanted to. She is naked, we're both naked, and I can feel the warm, smooth length of her body pressed against mine.

Unbidden, an erection surfaces, and the dream-me thinks what an inconvenience this is. But a hand wraps around me. It is too small, too smooth to be mine, but the touch is familiar. There's a certain pattern to the stroking thumb that I recognise and, all at once, I know it is the girl lying on my chest.

I cannot say why, but there is a sudden panic knotting in my chest. I can't see the woman's face. I can't see who is holding onto me, who has me trapped in this strange place. Achingly slowly, I move my hand up to the black curtain of her hair.

The fangs and black eyes and blood are all still there. I see a flash of them as she lunges for my face.

With a gasp, I jerk awake. I take a moment to feel the restraints. I look around me. The room is still dark, but there are strips of coloured lights around the door in case of emergencies. If I blink and then open my eyes, I can see the outline of the shelf unit. It's not blackness. I'm not in the Capitol, or in a strange train, but as safe as I can be in District Thirteen. I struggle to breathe. My eyes scan over the shadows and highlights of the room until I am convinced that they're solid, and nothing vicious lurks in the thick shadows.

And as I start to relax, I realise that a part of my mind has wandered. A snatch of a half of a memory. A curtain of black hair, not covering a face but surrounding me, as her face drops to mine and we kiss. As soon as it came, it is gone again. But I am almost sure it is the girl from the video. It is the girl who triggered what was initially a very pleasant dream.

"Is Delly coming today?" I ask in the morning, as my restraints are released. Today I'm starting a new project, but there are questions burning within me that need answering by someone who used to know me.

"No. There's going to be another visitor, though. She might take you by surprise, so make sure you're on your guard when she comes." The look on my face must have registered with the doctor, because she adds, "Oh, no, not Katniss."

I nod slowly. "OK."

I've been upgraded to a whiteboard and different coloured marker pens. I know that everything is tightly rationed here, and I'm going to need a lot of practice to perfect what I want to do. I don't develop the idea, but simplify it. Lines and curves, simple block colours – there'll be no chance of mixing shades. I draw, and then wipe clean. Draw, and then wipe clean. It's therapeutic, and like my therapy I see a steady improvement.

When I am almost happy with what I'm producing, there's a soft cough behind me. I turn, expecting one of the doctors, but it is a nurse. She's small, with blonde hair tied back in a braid, and eyes that are cornflower blue like my own. She's smiling, looking brightly interested in my drawing. Her smile is infectious, I find the corners of my own lips twitching, and without my realising the words, "Hello, Prim," leave my mouth.

"Oh!" She's grinning now, and looks like she is restraining herself from stepping closer. "They said you might not remember me."

Now my conscious mind is catching up with instinct, and some of the bad memories start to tug on my attention. I can see her with Katniss, with the mutt Katniss, with the Katniss that has no face. Somewhere deep inside of me, she is with the sad eyed girl from the video. I work hard not to let the uncertainty of my mind show. "No. No, I remember." Her smile is really very sweet. I find myself wondering if Katniss has ever had this smile. "Do you like it?" I ask.

She steps closer. In the peripheries of my vision, I see the doctors looking nervous. But they don't need to worry. Prim makes memories spring up, that's for sure. But most of them are entirely docile. She's in the bakery, or I see her at school. The ones where she is shadowed by a darker figure are usually very hazy. The only clear, dangerous one is the reaping – and it's so swamped by the others, I am managing to keep it at bay.

Prim looks down at my design. She reaches out a hand, as though to trace the curves of the waves. "Oh, don't," I say, reaching out reflexively to take her hand. She jumps, stiffened by terror for a moment, and the doctors advance. "No, it's fine. Just don't touch it. You'll smudge it, and I'm finally happy with it." I nod and grimace over my shoulder at the doctors. They go back to pretending they're not monitoring my every movement.

"I do like it. It's so pretty, and detailed. This is for the cake?" I nod. She is grinning at it. "It's going to be perfect."

"Care to take a seat?" I ask, gesturing to the room's only chair.

"I'm technically here under nursing capacities. I should probably look like I'm doing something medical."

My shoulders shrug. "Most of the time I'm with the doctors, we just sit and talk. I'm sure they wouldn't mind."

"You can just talk," one of them confirms without looking up.

Prim looks a little uncomfortable as she lowers herself into the seat. I perch on the bed, trying my best to be at ease – to show her that she does not need to feel awkward. More than anyone I have yet met, I want to prove to this girl that I am a normal person. And I can't quite figure out why.

It's a few moments before I realise she is floundering for something to say, so I begin. "It's nice of you to visit me."

"Oh, I wanted to come before. But they weren't sure if it would be in your best interest or not."

"I'm really pleased, actually. I thought Delly might come today. I wanted to ask some things, about before. Before everything."

By 'everything' I mean the reaping, the Hunger Games, the Quarter Quell, and every memory that could have been taped and used against me. It has become clear, now, that most of my bastardised memories are ones which have been caught on camera. Some have spread further, and this overhauling of my long-term memory has left things that are further back hazy and confused. The general consensus is that they're still there. I just need to find a way to tease them out without triggering the negative nightmare reactions.

Prim frowns a little but nods, "Go on. How can I help?"

"I … dreamed about Katniss last night." The doctors have ceased pretending to do anything else. I didn't tell them about the nightmare.

"A dream?" she prompts softly, and I think she must be as aware as I am of several pairs of ears listening in.

I tilt my head to one side. "It developed into a nightmare. But it's the first one I remember since … I don't know when. I just-" I break off, sighing. And then smile. "I don't remember much about before everything else. But everyone seems pretty insistent I used to be very … friendly, with Katniss. Can you tell me what I was like?"

She takes a deep breath and expels it in a rush. "Well, before the reaping you didn't actually see each other much. I guess at school, or when she went to the bakery to trade with your father. But I didn't see you together at all, really. You never went out of your way to see her, or come to the house. Nothing like that. You didn't court her back home. I guess you sort of hid your light under a bushel. I didn't know how you felt. Katniss certainly didn't."

Looking down at the floor, I try to hide my disappointment. My plan to try and learn the way I should feel, and behave, seems to have fallen at the first hurdle. "Well. Thank you, anyway," I say softly.

Prim's hand is so gentle at first, like the brush of a leaf. Then she squeezes my hand, until I look up into her face. "It's not as concrete as what I think you're looking for, but Katniss was certain you loved her." She glances around at the doctors and lowers her voice, "I don't know what they've told you, but _I_ really think you loved her."

"Because of what she said?" I ask dubiously.

She shakes her head. "Katniss hasn't been very chatty lately." I don't know why, but this makes me smile. There is a strong tug of familiarity within me, and a small voice inside says, 'I know'. "It wasn't what she _said_. Actually, it's been everything else. When you came back from the Hunger Games she was so guilty, all the time. Every time she saw you it was like someone had given her an electric shock, and she'd turn into a completely different person. She couldn't be easy around you."

"Well, that's reassuring," I mumble, pulling away.

"No, it _is_ reassuring." Little Prim is getting very insistent. There's a spark in her blue eyes and a firm set to her jaw that's achingly familiar, but I just can't place it. "You wanted to know your feelings. Your feelings made her guilty and awkward and abrupt." Prim shakes her head, and some golden strands of hair come loose from hair braid, falling in front of her face. "The only thing that makes her that way is love. She's the same with my mother. These days, she's the same with Gale. They love her, and she doesn't know what to do with it. She didn't know what to do with you, either."

Now it is me gripping her hand. As gratifying to my pride as it would have been to hear that Katniss and I lived in a state of romantic bliss before my memory became so ruptured, this is what I wanted to know. And Prim has delivered it to me neatly, in a logical package that I can accept. "Thank you," I say sincerely.

The girl nods and rises. "I need to get back to my duties. But I promise I'll visit again soon."

"That would be nice."

I take a couple of steps to see her to the door, though it makes the doctors twitchy. Prim looks over my shoulder, presumably to one of them, and gives a slight nod before wrapping her arms around my shoulders and embracing me. I freeze for a moment, but then tentatively lean down and pat her back in return. As our heads reach a level, she whispers, "Since she came here, she's been different. She … I think she loves you back, now."

We break apart, and I try to keep a stiffly sincere smile on my face as Prim leaves. I rake a hand through my hair, half-hoping it will order my thoughts as well as my unruly curls. But neither are left any better off, and I am left to puzzle over this new piece of information with what resources I have left.

**Additional Disclaimer:** The title 'Lady with The Braid' is taken from a Dory Previn song.


	10. Not Even Remotely Nice

**Not Even Remotely Nice**

The next three weeks are spent researching whatever relationship Katniss and I might or might not have had. Speaking to Prim has piqued my interest. It's the first time anyone has mentioned a possible reciprocation – all focus seems to have been on my own feelings towards her. But when I begin on this self-designed quest, there are plenty of opinions chiming in. Those who visit me who spend time with Katniss are fairly sure she loves me, even if she doesn't realise it herself. The doctors, who sit and watch tapes with me, give a running commentary of muttered comments between themselves that confirms my own objective view. It suited her purposes to appear affectionate, but what lies beneath is cold as stone.

It's rare that I have a 'mutt outburst', as the doctors have taken to calling them, while I watch the tapes. The temptation is there, sometimes more strongly than others, but I am able to push it away. I'm fairly sure now that my gut instinct of fear can't be trusted. Whatever this girl is, she is perfectly human. She has moments of fragility, of fierceness, moments when she seems so tiny and exhausted, others when she looks close to breaking down. And there are the tapes from our first Games, showing her injuries, cataloguing her near death experiences. There is a moment where I have made an alliance with the Career tributes and she drops a tracker jacker nest on us. I feel a life-like surge of the terror the venom causes when I watch it, and hate her for doing that to me whatever her reasons.

When Prim visits, we spend some time putting what I have learned into order of when each event happened. Though, as there are only really three taped events – our first Hunger Games, the Quarter Quell, and her more recent propaganda tapes for the rebellion – it's not too difficult to get the timeline straight in my head. Privately these tapes are labelled either 'pretending love', 'possibly love' or 'too tired to care'. The only confusing ones are promotional shots and brief interviews between the Games, when I can't quite place things into order.

Prim doesn't tell me much about what Katniss is doing now. She says it's because Katniss is in District Two and she doesn't hear from her often, but I don't know whether to believe her. If it's true, it doesn't speak highly in Katniss' favour that she's neglecting her sister, who's clearly concerned about her. Although she's younger than me, I can't help feeling that Normal Peeta was a bit dim for falling for the crabby, calculating, emotionally-stunted sister. Prim's very sweet and patient, and I feel like even if she needs to give me a blunt answer, she will try to do it kindly.

But at night, it is not Prim that swims into my head. Sometimes I get flashes of memories. Again and again, I go through an episode where a scrawny, black-haired little girl is digging through the bins of the bakery I once called home. So I burn some bread and take a strike from my mother in order to give her something to eat. Prim confirms this happened, and I experience a small thrill when I realise that not all of my memories have been destroyed or changed beyond recognition.

However, this is the only dream I can check with Prim. The others must be fantasies, maybe repeated in my head often enough before the hijacking that they lodged somewhere permanent. If I'm right, there is something very perverse in my imagination. It doesn't seem to matter how often I dream about my hands skimming over a too-slender body, we never seem to kiss. It's only once I dream about her talking to me, and that's to say that we can't carry on this way. Normal Peeta was clearly a glutton for punishment. These dreams leave me waking uncomfortable and unsatisfied and grateful that they no longer restrain my hands at night. I don't mention them to anyone. The doctors would have a field day.

For three weeks I carry on this research. At one point, Haymitch sits with me watching a clip of us on the beach during the Quarter Quell. For once, Katniss looks quite enthusiastic about the attention she's getting. I've seen it before – it's actually one of my favourites. Every time, I am disappointed when Finnick wakes. I want to know what would have happened if we had been left, how long it would have taken her to push me away. Haymitch asks if I'd want to see Katniss, if she asked to visit. No one's asked me this before. Again there's the uncanny feeling that the doctors have all pricked up their ears. I shrug as nonchalantly as I can. "Yeah, that would be fine." But there's a flicker of something low in my belly that I can't quite name. Like fear, like anger, like excitement – but none of those things, and all of them altogether.

When the doctors say I've had enough of the tapes, I work on the design for the cake, or do a fitness routine that I can carry out in the confines of my room in the hospital. I am steadily building up my strength, and the food rations are helping to bulk me up a bit. When I look in the long mirror which, I'm sure, is really a window, I don't look so drawn. I at least look more like Normal Peeta.

It comes time to draw my cake design for the last time. I am not allowed to actually bake the cake, which is a little disappointing, but whoever's in the kitchen has done a decent job. It's a little dryer than I might have managed, but it'll be a nice change for everyone at the wedding. I've not seen a single baked item, except for some very plain-but-nutritious bread, since I've been here. Everything I need is brought to my room. Water, icing sugar, colorants in the three shades I've said I'll need, and the various tools of my trade. I've been allowed two hours to finish it, but I manage in an hour and a half. When I'm done, I'm pleased and proud with the result. And for the first time, feel a stab of regret that I will not be able to see others enjoy it. This is the first time I've experienced any kind of desire to leave my cosy, safe room. When I tell the doctors, they seem very pleased. I just feel unsettled.

The day after I've iced the cake, which I suppose must be the day of the wedding, I'm working on a drawing when there's a flurry of activity and excitement amongst the doctors. I watch them carefully over the top of my sketch pad, and muse on how they're sometimes like a gaggle of geese when something exciting is happening. What new test have they devised for me, I wonder.

"Peeta," one of them calls up my attention. I raise my eyebrows expectantly. "Katniss is going to come and visit. If you think you're ready."

I shrug, like I did when Haymitch first suggested the idea.

At the mention of her name, that flicker of something is back. There's a surge of interest elsewhere in my body as well, but I put that down to too many fevered dreams of residual frustrated lust.

The room is cleared, except for one doctor – chaperone or bodyguard, I'm not sure of his function, but he makes himself blend into the background. My gaze flicks up to the mirror. Are there just doctors back there, or am I about to become part of their propaganda films? With a sigh, I watch the door instead, trying to decide how I feel. If she's anything like what I've seen on the tapes, I don't like her. This much is certain. There's nothing left of whatever love or infatuation I might have felt before, except for the fantasy-dreams which I treat with the same disdain and distrust as the mutt flashbacks.

_But what if she's … loveable?_

This question has been raised in my mind a few times. I loved her. Gale loves her (this is something else I vaguely remember). Prim loves her. Delly and Haymitch have very little to say in the way of negative things. Perhaps there is something about her that doesn't translate to camera, that you have to experience. Something I just can't remember clearly enough, but will be immediately apparent when she walks into the room.

The moment she steps through the door, I know that's not going to be something I need to worry about. She's dressed fairly plainly, as it seems most people do in Thirteen. Her dark hair is pulled back in a braid that winds up around her head, as it is in some of the videos. Her cheeks are flushed. She's not as sallow as she appears in some of the clips I've seen. But she's very thin. The bones stick out in her wrists, and her face looks pinched and sour. She's scarred, as well. Short sleeves bare her forearms, and one has a nasty gouged-looking lump of a scar. There's another thinner one above her eyebrow. And I can tell from the way she's standing that there are probably more scars covered up, the former injuries still plaguing her like ghosts of her past. It's something I recognise from myself, and I know I shouldn't hold it against her. But I do.

There's something closed off about her, in the flesh. And I can see now that the propaganda films have made her seem bigger, fiercer, than she really is. The girl that stands before me is a sullen teenager, who is small and uncertain of herself. If anything, I hate her more for not justifying the considerable amount of fear my body has expended on her.

She stands there for a moment. I wonder if she is studying, judging me with the same scrutiny. Partly to take a little control, I speak first. "Hey," I say, keeping my voice steady. Trying not to seem like a lunatic – though I don't really understand why that should matter.

"Hey," she replies. For a long moment, in which I refuse to speak, I think this is the only golden nugget of conversation my doctors are going to get to witness. Then, covering herself with her scrawny arms, she says, "Haymitch said you wanted to talk to me."

Haymitch has somewhat stretched my actual words. But she's given me the clue that he's probably behind the mirror watching us as well, so I don't correct her. "Look at you, for starters," I say. It gives me a cruel thrill to see her brow crease, her arms draw tighter around her midriff. It's not like Normal Peeta to enjoy her discomfort. I know that and, somehow, that is liberating. I don't want to be the lovesick fool any more. "You're not very big, are you?" I ask her, and I watch the dent in her confidence deflate her a bit. "Or particularly pretty?"

She doesn't even pause to think before the retort is out of her mouth, "Well, you've looked better."

This makes me laugh. Because somehow, she's everything I expected. Everything I hoped she would and wouldn't be. "And not even remotely nice. To say that to me after all I've been through."

I expect this to deflate her further, so I can feel that – although I may be mad and may spend the rest of my days in a small room surrounded by doctors – we are on an even keel. There is also a part of me that wants to see her register some emotion, even if it's a negative one. But she is closed off completely now. Her dark eyes are blank and hateful as they stare at me, and I can understand why my nightmares would turn her into a cold, unfeeling mutt.

"Yeah," says that harsh, steely voice. "We've all been through a lot. And you're the one who was known for being nice. Not me." This is hardly news. I don't always feel it, but I can tell from the way those who knew me act around me that I used to be a very pleasant person. It's one of the things I'm working hard to earn. One of the things that makes me wonder if Normal Peeta found everything quite as difficult as I do.

She's shifting from one foot to the other, inching steadily towards the door. "Look, I don't feel so well. Maybe I'll drop by tomorrow."

A wrenching in my stomach. I don't like her, but neither do I want her to leave. My brain does the thing where it bypasses my conscious decision making, and words tumble out of my mouth from nowhere. "Katniss, I remember about the bread."

Katniss shrugs. "They showed you the tape of me talking about it."

"No. Is there a tape of you talking about it?" The doctors certainly haven't brought it to me. But then, she doesn't know about my weeks of research. "Why didn't the Capitol use it against me?"

"I made it the day you were rescued," she explains. Still, that was months ago. My eyes flicker to the large mirror, as I wonder if the doctors kept it from me for a specific reason, or it's just somewhere in the pile and I haven't got to it yet. "So what do you remember?" she prompts, as though there might be a discrepancy between her memories and mine.

I list the events that I've dreamed, that feel concrete, as though they were a calming exercise where I name only the things of which I'm certain. No emotion, no attached feeling. Just facts the in the order they happened. "You. In the rain. Digging in our rubbish bins. Burning the bread. My mother hitting me. Taking the bread out for the pig but then giving it to you instead."

Her lips stretch, and I wonder if she thinks she's smiling. She's not. "That's it. That's what happened." Katniss doesn't look at me as she speaks. "The next day, after school, I wanted to thank you. But I didn't know how."

This triggers an additional memory. It's clear as day, just a few moments in time, but I'm certain they're real. "We were outside at the end of the day. I tried to catch your eye. You looked away. And then … for some reason, I think you picked a dandelion." That was her moment of trying to thank me? A pretty poor effort, by anyone's estimation. And on these great events, I chose the love of my life. By all accounts I loved her regardless of how else she might have treated me. Despite lack of reciprocation, lack of even a thank you. "I must have loved you a lot," I say. Because I can't these things having the same effect on me, if they were to happen again right now.

A scrawny girl half dead from starvation. A beating over two loaves of bread. A failure to say thank you, because she was distracted by a weed. These are not the things on which romances are built.

"You did," she says, for once her voice sounding choked. Katniss turns it into a cough, but no one's fooled.

Time for the big question, I think. Though I'm certain by now that I know the answer, whatever words Katniss speaks in reply. "And did you love me?"

"Everyone says I did."

That's not an answer, I reply in my head. But I grind my teeth, gritting my jaw in order to let her finish.

"Everyone says that's why Snow had you tortured. To break me."

Pathetic response.

"That's not an answer," I say, when it's clear there's no other explanation forthcoming. I'm angrier than I expected. Not the rages that overtake me when I have flashbacks, but a low burning fury deep in my gut. Words are tumbling from my lips in a rush, "I don't know what to think when they show me some of the tapes. In that first arena, it looked like you tried to kill me with those tracker jackers."

"I was trying to kill all of you. You had me treed." Her voice is much too calm. I need to regain control – and the only way I can think of doing it is by taking away some of her control, to put us on an even peg again.

"Later, there's a lot of kissing. Didn't seem very genuine on your part. Did you like kissing me?"

She blinks, but otherwise there's little sign of discomfort, and I'm disappointed. "Sometimes." Her dark eyes glance at the mirror as well. "You know people are watching us now?"

"I know." It's becoming more difficult to keep to the thread of what I want from her. There's a flash of a memory - a current memory, not an old one - of the tape where she sings the song to the mockingjay. The first tape of her that the doctors showed me. And Gale was with her. "What about Gale?"

A beat. "He's not a bad kisser either." Her timing is flawless.

"And it was OK with both of us? You kissing the other?" I'm well aware that, once more, my temper is fraying.

"No. It wasn't OK with either of you." Well, that's got her angry. At least if I have to sit here, stewing in my own fury, I will know I'm not the only one who couldn't keep a grip on their fragile self-control. "But I wasn't asking your permission."

I laugh. It's a hollow bark that makes me think of the mutts of my nightmares. There's a lump riding high in my throat that's making my words stick, but I swallow it down well enough that I sound almost normal when I say, "Well, you're a piece of work, aren't you?"

There's not even time to register a reaction from her. She turns on her heel and walks out.

I should be satisfied, that I had the last word. That I got a reaction from her. That I made her feel at least as bad as I have been feeling for the last three weeks, as I watched her artfully play the boy that I used to be. All I feel is hollow. And a little disappointed.

It takes a long time for the doctors to get around to coming back in. There is one with me, my chaperone-guard, but he stays in the background. I've nearly forgotten that he's there. My hands are gripping the arms of my only chair. I'm concentrating on the feel of cold, solid metal biting into my hands. It is real and certain, unlike the swarm and rush of my emotions. They are refusing to take form, to be definite. I want to feel satisfied. I want my mind to tell me that it's ok to hate her now. But there's too much confusion, and I can't pick out a single solid emotional reaction.

Putting this down to the hijacking would be too easy. I have been sheltered here, in my little hospital room. Things have been made simple for me so that they're easier for my damaged brain to consume, like mushing up food for babies. This - the uncertainty and hate and anguish and, if I'm honest, longing - is what being alive really feels like. Complexity is the norm. This is what I remember from my real life, before the hijacking.

By the time the doctors return I am breathing normally again. I have shoved away a panic attack and ignored the temptation to be overtaken by flashbacks that would allow me to simply hate her. Once again, the route to getting better seems to be the most terrifying, confusing one available.

Only doctors come into my room. I know Haymitch was behind the mirror, Katniss as good as told me so. He must have followed her when she ran off. Another stab of confusing emotion, as I recall her words, "We've all been through a lot," And I know I am not the only one for whom the last two years has been traumatic. I wonder if there is a room very like this, in which Katniss has spent more time than she should.

"You did very well, Peeta," is all I'm told. If they have made any breakthroughs from watching me confront my biggest fear, they don't enlighten me about it.

My teeth are grinding again, as my mind goes over our conversation again and again. I look for details I might have missed. I look for ... I don't even know what. As though my mind is searching for proof of something, a feeling from her in one direction or another, but I don't know exactly what I'm hoping to find.

Katniss knows that she's not nice. She didn't even pretend to be. She didn't ask how I was. But she presented herself, because she was told I wanted to see her.

Katniss says everyone has had a rough time. I try to remember her scars from the tapes, try to judge how recently the ones I saw were made. The one on her eyebrow, that was the first Hunger Games. The one on her arm? I can't remember if I've seen it before or not. The aches that made her stoop slightly would be more recent. And now that I try my best to think about it, to remember, I can't tell whether she was covering her stomach with her arms out of self-consciousness, or she was holding something that hurt.

Katniss said she sometimes liked kissing me. Said that everyone says she loves me. It's not an answer. Except that it is, it's her answer, and probably the only one I'm going to get. Everyone says she loved me: the coward's way of saying 'no'.

"I'm tired," I tell the doctors. The slump of my shoulders, the abatement of the adrenaline that has been keeping me going, confirms that this is true. There are no arguments when I manoeuvre to the bed, and pull the blankets up over my head to block out the lights and be left alone with my circling thoughts.


End file.
